The Discovery: Chamber of Secrets
by bookworm1256
Summary: Albus and co. continue to poke their noses where they don't belong. But what did you expect? They're Potters and Weasles and Lupins and... Malfoys?
1. The Worst Birthday

**A/N: This story was taken down during the great RC purge a year ago. I wasn't going to put it back up, but a kind reviewer asked me ever so nicely, and since I finally got a copy of it (thanks to another awesome reader) I decided to repost it and see what would happen. I don't want to get Bookworm1256 into any trouble, though, so we'll see. All the author's notes and disclaimers are lost to the ether, but you don't really want to listen to me ramble anyway. I worked hard on some of those disclaimers though. Well, that tells you something about my creativity, lol. Anyway, thanks for your support and interest. **

**Disclaimer: I own NOTHING. Literally nothing. Except college debt. You can sue me for that if you want.**

**The Discovery: The Chamber of Secrets**

By bookworm1256 ( )

**Chapter 1-The Worst Birthday**

The next morning Albus was woken by slamming face-first into the floor. High-pitched giggling above him told him who the culprit was.

"Lily!" he groaned into the floor. Sure enough when he rolled over it was to see his little sister grinning down at him from where she knelt on his bed.

"James has turned you evil," Albus told her, picking himself up off the floor.

"Teddy told me to wake you up," she explained, launching herself onto his back and nearly making them both topple to the ground.

"And you couldn't have just poked me or something?" he questioned through the half-strangling grip Lily had around his neck.

"Nope," she said sweetly, leaning forward to plant a kiss on her brother's cheek before sliding to the floor and dancing away, laughing like a maniac.

"Lily!" Albus complained, whipping furiously at the place Lily had kissed him. "Oh shut it," he added to Scorpius who'd woken up when Albus landed on the floor with a loud thud and was now laughing himself silly at his friend.

Albus grabbed the edge of Scorpius's blanket and tugged so hard that Scorpius slipped off his own bed and landed on the floor in a heap.

When Rose pushed open the door five minutes later, second book in hand, it was to find her two best friends beating each other senseless with their pillows, the room a complete disaster.

Rose rolled her eyes, when they both dropped their weapons the instant they saw her and tried to pull innocent expressions onto their faces.

"You two are ridiculous," she told them, smiling fondly.

"Hey, that's our job!" came Fred's indignant voice from behind Rose. She turned to see him, James, and Hugo coming up the stairs. Behind them was Teddy with Lily on his back, both of them still smirking in a conspiratorial way.

The little attic bedroom was more like a nest with the beds torn apart, but they didn't bother tidying up. Everyone threw themselves down on one of the beds or in the mess of blankets and pillows on the floor.

Rose settled the second book on her knees and waited for everybody to get comfortable.

"This one's called Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," she announced. "I'll start I suppose."

Everyone tensed with anticipation, eager to begin reading.

Rose opened the book to the first chapter and began.

**Chapter One The Worst Birthday**

"Well, that sounds lovely," Fred said cheerfully while Teddy frowned, thinking Harry would be back with the Dursleys. He'd read the first five chapters of the last book for himself yesterday afternoon (everybody who had come in late decided to read or listen to the chapters they'd missed) and it had been even worse than what Al, James, and Rose had told him. He couldn't believe Harry had never told him something like this. It would have shut him up pretty quick when he'd been feeling sorry for himself.

**Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr. Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry's room.**

"Well, what does he expect? Uncle Harry's an avid bird caller!" Fred said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "He's got to practice or they'll kick him out of the club."

Rose sighed and smacked her forehead while James snickered.

"**Third time this week!" he roared across the table. "If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!"**

**Harry tried, yet again, to explain.**

"**She's **_**bored,**_**" he said. "She's used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night —"**

"Now they're locking up his owl, too!" Lily said furiously. It had nearly reduced her to tears to read about her dad being locked in a tiny dark cupboard and not having any friends; she was not feeling very friendly towards the Dursleys at the moment.

"**Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache. **

"Er, I'm gonna go with 'yes', final answer," Fred said, nodding at the book.

"**I know what'll happen if that owl's let out."**

**He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia.**

"Yes, Dad might actually talk to one of his friends!" James said dramatically.

"The horror!" Fred added, clutching at his heart.

"Calamity will ensue!"

"The world will be set upon by furious winds and vengeful pixies!"

"There will be no hope for survivors!"

Rose started reading again before Fred and James could go any crazier.

**Harry tried to argue back but his words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys' son, Dudley.**

The boys snickered while Lily and Rose made faces.

"**I want more bacon."**

"**There's more in the frying pan, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. "We must build you up while we've got the chance. . . . **

James, Albus, and Lily looked at each other and burst out laughing. That explained so much.

**I don't like the sound of that school food. . . ."**

"**Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when **_**I **_**was at Smeltings," said Uncle Vernon heartily. "Dudley gets enough, don't you, son?"**

**Dudley, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, **

Again all the boys snickered and even Lily giggled a bit.

**grinned and turned to Harry.**

"**Pass the frying pan."**

"**You've forgotten the magic word," said Harry irritably.**

**The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair **

"Right through the floor, leaving a massive hole the size of a baby elephant," James interrupted.

Rose glared at him and continued reading the actual words.

**with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs. Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr. Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples.**

"Jeez, talk about jumpy," Fred muttered.

"**I meant 'please'!" said Harry quickly. "I didn't mean —"**

"**WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU," thundered his uncle, spraying spit over the table, **

More grossed out faces.

"**ABOUT SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN OUR HOUSE?"**

"**But I —"**

"**HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.**

"He didn't threaten anybody," Albus said indignantly.

"**I just —"**

"**I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!"**

**Harry stared from his purple-faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet.**

"Good luck there," James muttered.

"**All right," said Harry, "**_**all right **_**. . ."**

**Uncle Vernon sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Harry closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes.**

**Ever since Harry had come home for the summer holidays, Uncle Vernon had been treating him like a bomb that might go off at any moment, because Harry Potter **_**wasn't **_**a normal boy. As a matter of fact, he was as not normal as it is possible to be.**

"You're telling us," James sniggered.

"I dunno what you're laughing at," Rose told him. "You're just like him."

"You're cheap shots are getting old Rosie," James pouted, ducking the pillow that went soaring his way for using her nickname.

**Harry Potter was a wizard — a wizard fresh from his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were unhappy to have him back for the holidays, it was nothing to how Harry felt.**

"I think we all agree it's a sucky set up," Teddy said.

"So how come Dad had to go back there every summer?" James demanded. "Why'd Dumbledore leave him there at all? If they hate each other it'd be better for him to be in an orphanage or couldn't Dumbledore have found some other Muggle family that would take him in?"

"I don't know," Teddy sighed, wondering the same thing.

**He missed Hogwarts so much it was like having a constant stomachache. He missed the castle, with its secret passageways and ghosts, his classes (though perhaps not Snape, the Potions master), the mail arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall, sleeping in his four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper, Hagrid, in his cabin next to the Forbidden Forest in the grounds, and, especially, Quidditch, the most popular sport in the wizarding world (six tall goal posts, four flying balls, and fourteen players on broomsticks).**

James groaned so loudly that several people looked at him with concern. "Imagine… no Quidditch all summer! How did Dad survive?"

Most of the others shook their head, either in agreement with James or in exasperation at him.

**All Harry's spellbooks, his wand, robes, cauldron, and top-ofthe-line Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs by Uncle Vernon the instant Harry had come home. What did the Dursleys care if Harry lost his place on the House Quidditch team because he hadn't practiced all summer?**

"Don't worry Dad, you're still a brilliant flyer!" Lily said reassuringly.

**What was it to the Dursleys if Harry went back to school without any of his homework done? **

"Ooo, that could be more of a problem," Rose said, looking horrified at the very prospect.

"Where's Dad?" Hugo asked. "He better show up and rescue Harry soon."

"I bet he will," Teddy agreed, grinning suddenly.

**The Dursleys were what wizards called Muggles (not a drop of magical blood in their veins), and as far as they were concerned, having a wizard in the family was a matter of deepest shame. **

There were some growls at this.

**Uncle Vernon had even padlocked Harry's owl, Hedwig, inside her cage, to stop her from carrying messages to anyone in the wizarding world.**

**Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family. **

"Thank god," James said.

**Uncle Vernon was large and neckless, with an enormous black mustache; Aunt Petunia was horse-faced and bony; Dudley was blond, pink, and porky. Harry, on the other hand, was small and skinny, with brilliant green eyes and jet-black hair that was always untidy. He wore round glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lightning-shaped scar.**

**It was this scar that made Harry so particularly unusual, even for a wizard. This scar was the only hint of Harry's very mysterious past, of the reason he had been left on the Dursleys' doorstep eleven years before.**

**At the age of one year old, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest Dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort, whose name most witches and wizards still feared to speak.**

"Why do we have to go through this again?" Lily said miserably.

"To remind everybody who's forgotten," Teddy answered dully. He couldn't imagine anybody forgetting about a double murder, but to the lucky ones who could pretend none of this ever happened…

**Harry's parents had died in Voldemort's attack, but Harry had escaped with his lightning scar, and somehow — nobody understood why — Voldemort's powers had been destroyed the instant he had failed to kill Harry.**

**So Harry had been brought up by his dead mother's sister and her husband. He had spent ten years with the Dursleys, never understanding why he kept making odd things happen without meaning to, believing the Dursleys' story that he had got his scar in the car crash that had killed his parents.**

Lily gave a little stifled moan at the sharp reminders, and Albus, who was sitting next to her, put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. She might be the most annoying little devil to ever be born sometimes, but she was still his baby sister.

**And then, exactly a year ago, Hogwarts had written to Harry, and the whole story had come out. Harry had taken up his place at wizard school, where he and his scar were famous . . . but now the school year was over, and he was back with the Dursleys for the summer, back to being treated like a dog that had rolled in something smelly.**

They all scowled at the book angrily.

**The Dursleys hadn't even remembered that today happened to be Harry's twelfth birthday. **

Lily made an outraged noise. Birthdays were very important.

**Of course, his hopes hadn't been high; they'd never given him a real present, let alone a cake — but to ignore it completely . . .**

Teddy sighed, realizing why Harry had always made his birthdays a big deal now. When he was younger it had embarrassed him, especially at Hogwarts when a small flock of owls would bombard him at the breakfast table and Hagrid would make him cakes (which were surprisingly edible) and all of his birthday cards would be signed "love", which gave his dorm mates endless amusement. But now he though he knew why Harry always stirred up so much ruckus. It was a lot better than being ignored.

**At that moment, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat importantly and said, "Now, as we all know, today is a very important day."**

**Harry looked up, hardly daring to believe it.**

"Don't believe it," James advised, cringing a little.

"**This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career," said Uncle Vernon.**

**Harry went back to his toast. **_**Of course, **_**he thought bitterly, **_**Uncle Vernon was talking about the stupid dinner party. **_

"Told you so," James muttered saddly.

**He'd been talkingof nothing else for two weeks. Some rich builder and his wifewere coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon was hoping to get a hugeorder from him (Uncle Vernon's company made drills).**

"**I think we should run through the schedule one more time," said Uncle Vernon. "We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be — ?"**

"**In the lounge," said Aunt Petunia promptly, "waiting to welcome them graciously to our home."**

"**Good, good. And Dudley?"**

"**I'll be waiting to open the door." Dudley put on a foul, simpering smile. "May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?"**

"Is part of the plan to scare them away?" Fred asked confusedly.

"Anyone who things that's a sweet picture is an idiot," James agreed.

"**They'll **_**love **_**him!" cried Aunt Petunia rapturously.**

"I guess this is the Dursleys we're talking about," James said while everybody busted up.

"**Excellent, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon. Then he rounded on Harry. "And **_**you**_**?"**

"**I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry tonelessly.**

"That's awful," it was surprisingly Scorpius who said this, but the others nodded in agreement.

"**Exactly," said Uncle Vernon nastily. "I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight fifteen —"**

"**I'll announce dinner," said Aunt Petunia.**

"**And, Dudley, you'll say —"**

"**May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs. Mason?" said Dudley, offering his fat arm to an invisible woman.**

"**My perfect little gentleman!" sniffed Aunt Petunia.**

"**And **_**you**_**?" said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry.**

"**I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry dully.**

"**Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compliments at dinner. Petunia, any ideas?"**

"**Vernon tells me you're a **_**wonderful **_**golfer, Mr. Mason. . . . **_**Do **_**tell me where you bought your dress, Mrs. Mason. . . ."**

"**Perfect . . . Dudley?"**

"**How about — 'We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr. Mason, and **_**I **_**wrote about **_**you.**_**' "**

The entire room burst into laughter. That had to be the most insincere, sycophantic thing any of them had heard.

"I'd find that creepy," James said, shuddering a little.

**This was too much for both Aunt Petunia and Harry. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and hugged her son, while Harry ducked under the table so they wouldn't see him laughing.**

"**And you, boy?"**

**Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged.**

"**I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not**

**there," he said.**

"**Too right, you will," said Uncle Vernon forcefully. "The Masons don't know anything about you and it's going to stay that way. When dinner's over, you take Mrs. Mason back to the lounge for coffee, Petunia, and I'll bring the subject around to drills. With any luck, I'll have the deal signed and sealed before the news at ten. We'll be shopping for a vacation home in Majorca this time tomorrow."**

**Harry couldn't feel too excited about this. He didn't think the Dursleys would like him any better in Majorca than they did on Privet Drive.**

Lily sighed sadly and leaned against Albus, wishing her father hadn't had to ever think things like that.

"**Right — I'm off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And **_**you,**_**" he snarled at Harry. "You stay out of your aunt's way while she's cleaning."**

**Harry left through the back door. It was a brilliant, sunny day. He crossed the lawn, slumped down on the garden bench, and sang under his breath:**

"**Happy birthday to me . . . happy birthday to me . . ."**

The atmosphere turned decidedly depressed after hearing this.

**No cards, no presents, and he would be spending the evening pretending not to exist. **

Lily sniffled a little and said in a sad little voice. "You don't _actually_ have to pretend, Dad."

That made most people smile in spite of themselves.

**He gazed miserably into the hedge. He had never felt so lonely. More than anything else at Hogwarts, more even than playing Quidditch, Harry missed his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. **

Rose, Hugo, and Teddy grinned but it was a bit sadly because Harry was so lonely.

**They, however, didn't seem to be missing him at all. Neither of them had written to him all summer,**

"What? That's not right," Hugo said, frowning. "I'm sure Mum and Dad would be writing to Harry."

"They can't even go a day without seeing each other now," Rose agreed, "I doubt they could go a whole summer without talking."

**even though Ron had said he was going to ask Harry to come and stay.**

"He better," Hugo said forcefully.

**Countless times, Harry had been on the point of unlocking Hedwig's cage by magic and sending her to Ron and Hermione with a letter, but it wasn't worth the risk. Underage wizards weren't allowed to use magic outside of school. Harry hadn't told the Dursleys this; he knew it was only their terror that he might turn them all into dung beetles that stopped them from locking **_**him **_**in the cupboard under the stairs with his wand and broomstick. **

"Teddy, if they do that again, you're gonna apperate to umber four Privet Drive and make them sorry, right?" James demanded angrily, turning to Teddy.

"You bet," Teddy agreed, growling a little. He hadn't gotten the chance to talk to Harry about this last night and he didn't know how to bring it up without telling him about the books, so the frustration that Harry had kept all of this hidden and the pain that it had happened at all was just getting worse.

**For the first couple of weeks back, Harry had enjoyed muttering nonsense**

**words under his breath and watching Dudley tearing out of the room as fast as his fat legs would carry him. **

Fred and James sniggered vindictively.

**But the long silence from Ron and Hermione had made Harry feel so cut off from the magical world that even taunting Dudley had lost its appeal **

"It must be really bad then," Fred said solemnly. He could not imagine taunting someone like Dudley Dursley would ever lose its appeal.

— **and now Ron and Hermione had forgotten his birthday.**

"I'm sure they didn't," Hugo said looking as miserable as if it was _his _birthday that had been forgotten. He couldn't believe his parents could just forget about his uncle like that especially if they had any idea what the Dursleys were like.

**What wouldn't he give now for a message from Hogwarts? From any witch or wizard? He'd almost be glad of a sight of his archenemy, Draco Malfoy, just to be sure it hadn't all been a dream. . . .**

"I think they need to get him to St. Mungo's," Fred said seriously.

"Yeah, if he'd actually be glad to see a _Malfoy_," James added, looking at Scorpius in horror.

Scorpius made a face at him, to which James replied by sticking out his tongue and Albus reached around Lily to smack his brother over the head for being an idiot.

**Not that his whole year at Hogwarts had been fun. At the very end of last term, Harry had come face-to-face with none other than Lord Voldemort himself.**

Lily shivered and Albus quickly put his arm back around her. She'd had a horrible nightmare about the end of the last book last night and after she'd woke up she kept imagined that his flat, snake-like face was looming up over the end of her bed, scarlet eyes flashing and cold spidery fingers reaching out for her throat. It was times like that when Lily was grateful to have Rose as a cousin because Rose hadn't complained at all when Lily crawled into her bed and snuggled up close to her even though it was a hot and muggy night and Lily had woke her up by accidentally kneeing her in the stomach.

**Voldemort might be a ruin of his former self, but he was still terrifying, still cunning, still determined to regain power. Harry had slipped through Voldemort's clutches for a second time, but it had been a narrow escape, and even now, weeks later, Harry kept waking in the night, drenched in cold sweat, **

Lily made a small noise of sympathy for her father and James dug around in his pocket and handed her a chocolate frog to hopefully make her feel better since Albus already had the protective big brother thing going.

Teddy smiled at the three of them. Lily had all of them wrapped around her little finger.

**Wondering where Voldemort was now, remembering his livid face, his wide, mad eyes —**

"Shut up, Dad," James groaned as Lily began to tremble.

**Harry suddenly sat bolt upright on the garden bench. He had been staring absent-mindedly into the hedge — **_**and the hedge wasstaring back. **_

"What?" Hugo asked, confused.

"ATTACK OF THE MONSTER HEDGE!" Fred yelled suddenly, making everybody jump and scowl at him except James who'd been expecting it and Lily who giggled.

**Two enormous green eyes had appeared among the leaves.**

**Harry jumped to his feet just as a jeering voice floated across the lawn.**

"**I know what day it is," sang Dudley, waddling toward him.**

Fred and James started clapping and whistling.

"Alright! Good on you Dudders!"

"It only took you twelve years to get the days of the weak down!"

Rose shot them a "shut up you twits" sort of look, and they decided it was in their best interest to be quiet and let her read.

**The huge eyes blinked and vanished.**

"**What?" said Harry, not taking his eyes off the spot where they had been.**

"**I know what day it is," Dudley repeated, coming right up to him.**

"**Well done," said Harry. "So you've finally learned the days of the week."**

There were some snickers as Fred and James looked put out that their joke had already been used.

"**Today's your **_**birthday,**_**" sneered Dudley. "How come you haven't got any cards? Haven't you even got friends at that freak place?"**

"Of course he does," Hugo said defensively.

"**Better not let your mum hear you talking about my school," said Harry coolly.**

**Dudley hitched up his trousers, which were slipping down his fat bottom.**

The boys snickered again.

"**Why're you staring at the hedge?" he said suspiciously.**

"**I'm trying to decide what would be the best spell to set it on fire," said Harry.**

Fred and James grinned at each other. "Brilliant!" they said, slapping a high five.

**Dudley stumbled backward at once, a look of panic on his fat face.**

"**You c-can't — Dad told you you're not to do m-magic — he said he'll chuck you out of the house — and you haven't got anywhere else to go — you haven't got any **_**friends **_**to take you —"**

"He does to," Hugo and Lily said at the same time and grinned at each other across the room. Hugo was glad Lily was grinning. He didn't like it when she got upset.

"_**Jiggery pokery**_**!" said Harry in a fierce voice. "**_**Hocus pocus **_**— **_**squiggly wiggly **_**—"**

Nearly everybody was chuckling. Fred and James were rolling around on the floor and Scorpius and Albus were howling because Rose had read the nonsense words with overdramatic intensity.

"He can't really think those would do anything?" Fred gasped.

"Who cares? Dad's the best!" James gasped back. "Wish we could do that."

"**MUUUUUUM!" howled Dudley, tripping over his feet as he dashed back toward the house. "MUUUUM! He's doing you know what!"**

**Harry paid dearly for his moment of fun. As neither Dudley nor the hedge was in any way hurt, Aunt Petunia knew he hadn't really done magic, but he still had to duck as she aimed a heavy blow at his head with the soapy frying pan. **

"She did WHAT?" Rose screeched, leaping to her feat and dropping the book.

"You're the one with the book," James pointed out, but Rose was too busy seething to notice.

"She could have _killed _him! I can't believe she tried to hit her twelve-year-old nephew in the head with a FRYING PAN!"

"He did duck," Fred pointed out half-heartedly.

"Doesn't matter," Teddy said. He was so mad he was shaking. "She still tried to hit him. This has got to be against the law. These people can't be allowed to treat a kid like this!"

Rose and Teddy weren't the only ones fuming as Rose dropped back into her seat and picked up the book agian. Albus was white with fury and Scorpius and Hugo were both looking a little bit sick. Lily's eyes were narrowed dangerously and Fred and James looked appalled.

**Then she gave him work to do, with the promise he wouldn't eat again until he'd finished.**

There was some mutinous muttering about this, and Rose continued reading in clipped tones.

**While Dudley lolled around watching and eating ice cream, Harry cleaned the windows, washed the car, mowed the lawn, trimmed the flowerbeds, pruned and watered the roses, and repainted the garden bench. The sun blazed overhead, burning the back of his neck. Harry knew he shouldn't have risen to Dudley's bait, but Dudley had said the very thing Harry had been thinking himself . . . maybe he **_**didn't **_**have any friends at Hogwarts. . . .**

"Of course you do," Rose sighed. "They're just being stupid."

"I still think they're writing to him," Hugo said, crossing his arms defiantly.

_**Wish they could see famous Harry Potter now, **_**he thought savagely as he spread manure on the flower beds, his back aching, sweat running down his face.**

**It was half past seven in the evening when at last, exhausted, he heard Aunt Petunia calling him.**

"**Get in here! And walk on the newspaper!"**

**Harry moved gladly into the shade of the gleaming kitchen. On top of the fridge stood tonight's pudding: a huge mound of whipped cream and sugared violets. A loin of roast pork was sizzling in the oven.**

"But Dad's not getting any of that," Albus muttered bitterly.

"**Eat quickly! The Masons will be here soon!" snapped Aunt Petunia, pointing to two slices of bread and a lump of cheese on the kitchen table. **

Albus huffed. "They didn't even give him lunch. What are they trying to do? Starve him?"

**She was already wearing a salmon-pink cocktail dress.**

**Harry washed his hands and bolted down his pitiful supper. The moment he had finished, Aunt Petunia whisked away his plate.**

"**Upstairs! Hurry!"**

**As he passed the door to the living room, Harry caught a glimpse of Uncle Vernon and Dudley in bow ties and dinner jackets. He had only just reached the upstairs landing when the doorbell rang and Uncle Vernon's furious face appeared at the foot of the stairs.**

"**Remember, boy — one sound —"**

"Harry better not make a sound because if they do anything to him I'm likely going to end up in Azkaban," Teddy growled and the others looked at him worriedly. They had never seen Teddy so mad.

**Harry crossed to his bedroom on tiptoe, slipped inside, closed the door, and turned to collapse on his bed.**

**The trouble was, there was already someone sitting on it.**

"What? Who?" was the general chorus as Rose set the book down, indicating that she'd finished her chapter.

Teddy leaned forward and took the book quickly, thinking he needed something to keep his hands busy if the Dursleys got any worse.


	2. Dobby's Warning

**Chapter 2-Dobby's Warning**

Teddy opened his mouth to read the chapter title, but his voice died in his throat.

"What is it, Teddy?" James asked, leaning across Fred and Hugo to try to catch a glimpse of the title, but the book was too far away and all he accomplished was squishing Hugo (though in James's opinion, this was an acceptable accomplishment).

Teddy cleared his throat, sat up a little straighter, and read

**Dobby's Warning**

"Dobby?" Lily repeated. "Like the rock in Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur's garden?"

"Yeah, just like that," Teddy said softly.

Everyone who had seen the little grave grew very solemn.

Scorpius, who had no idea what the others were talking about, asked very uncomfortably, "Who's Dobby?"

Everyone, as they so often did, turned to look at Teddy because he was the oldest and because none of them really wanted to explain.

"We don't really know all that much about him," Teddy told Scorpius, rolling his eyes at the others' expectant faces. "There's a rock in Bill and Fleur's garden that says 'here lies Dobby, a free elf' in Harry's writing. I asked Bill once and all he told me was that Dobby was a war hero and that he was Harry's friend."

"But… didn't you say he was an elf? Like a house-elf?" Scorpius said cautiously, because the sudden shift from fury to solemnity unnerved him slightly.

"Yes, he was a house-elf," Rose answered with a trace of acidity in her voice. "And he was a hero and my uncle's friend."

"Right, sorry," Scorpius muttered, ducking his head under Rose's glare. She had inherited her mother's passionate sense of justice for other creatures.

"This must be when Dad first met him," Lily piped up, hoping to stop Rose's glare. "I suppose we'll find out all about him now. How he got to be buried at Shell Cottage and why…why Dad goes out to his grave every time we're over there, even when it's hailing."

"Yeah, we probably will," Teddy agreed and he kept reading, keen to hear the story he'd always been afraid to ask about.

**Harry managed not to shout out, but it was a close little creature on the bed had large, bat-like ears and** **bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls. **

"It's a house-elf," Fred said sagely.

Rose opened and closed her mouth, staring at him with incredulity so intense, the rest expected him to burst into flames.

Teddy hurriedly kept reading before she could regain the use of her voice.

**Harry knew instantly** **that this was what had been watching him out of the garden hedge** **that morning.**

**As they stared at each other, Harry heard Dudley's voice from the hall.**

"**May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?"**

**The creature slipped off the bed and bowed so low that the end of its long, thin nose touched the carpet. Harry noticed that it was wearing what looked like an old pillowcase, with rips for arm- and leg-holes.**

"That's terrible!" Rose spluttered. Her mother had managed to pass legislation that required anyone owning a house-elf to provide hygienic living conditions. She had never really understood how important that achievement was until now.

"**Er — hello," said Harry nervously.**

"**Harry Potter!" said the creature in a high-pitched voice Harry was sure would carry down the stairs. "So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir . . . Such an honor it is. . . ."**

"Reason #24 that Dad is the best celebrity ever," James grinned. "Any old Quidditch star's got girls sneaking into their rooms, but I bet none of them had a house-elf do that before!"

"**Th-thank you," said Harry, edging along the wall and sinking into his desk chair, next to Hedwig, who was asleep in her large cage. He wanted to ask, "What are you?" but thought it would sound too rude, so instead he said, "Who are you?"**

"**Dobby, sir. Just Dobby. Dobby the house-elf," said the creature.**

"**Oh — really?" said Harry. "Er — I don't want to be rude or anything, but — this isn't a great time for me to have a house-elf in my bedroom."**

"Fred, when is it a great time to have a house-elf in your bedroom?" James asked, turning to his cousin.

"Why, anytime of course!" Fred grinned. "It says so on the advertisements!"

"You two are hopeless," Lily told them for Rose because she was gapping furiously at them again.

**Aunt Petunia's high, false laugh sounded from the living room. The elf hung his head.**

"Oh, Dad, now you've hurt his feelings," Lily sighed.

"**Not that I'm not pleased to meet you," said Harry quickly, "but, er, is there any particular reason you're here?"**

"**Oh, yes, sir," said Dobby earnestly. "Dobby has come to tell you, sir . . . it is difficult, sir . . . Dobby wonders where to begin. . . ."**

"**Sit down," said Harry politely, pointing at the bed.**

**To his horror, the elf burst into tears — very noisy tears.**

"This is a very strange elf," Fred commented. "Er – I mean that with the highest respect of course," he added quickly, catching sight of Rose's glare.

Because it came from Fred, Rose could accept strange as being a compliment.

"_**S-sit down**_**!" he wailed. "**_**Never . . . never ever **_**. . ."**

**Harry thought he heard the voices downstairs falter. **

"If Dobby doesn't shut up, he's gonna get Harry in trouble," Hugo said, starting to get worried. "What's he come to tell him about anyways?"

"**I'm sorry," he whispered, "I didn't mean to offend you or anything —"**

"**Offend Dobby!" choked the elf. "Dobby has **_**never **_**been asked to sit down by a wizard — like an **_**equal **_**—"**

**Harry, trying to say "Shh!" and look comforting at the same time, ushered Dobby back onto the bed where he sat hiccoughing, looking like a large and very ugly doll. At last he managed to control himself, and sat with his great eyes fixed on Harry in an expression of watery adoration**

"**You can't have met many decent wizards," said Harry, trying to cheer him up.**

**Dobby shook his head. Then, without warning, he leapt up and started banging his head furiously on the window, shouting, "**_**Bad**_** Dobby! **_**Bad **_**Dobby!"**

"Like I said," Fred said, "Strange."

"Why's he doing that?" Rose asked Teddy, eyes wide.

"House-elves used to have to punish themselves if they did something wrong or against their masters' orders," Teddy explained grimly. "It was one of the first and most difficult pieces of legislation your mum passed. Harry and Ron worked almost as hard as she did to get the support of most of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on her side. I was five when she did it and I don't think I saw any of them for at least three weeks because of it."

"They had to beat themselves up?" Albus asked, looking sick. He thought what his aunt did was good and his parents always said to be fair to all creatures, but he'd never really paid attention to the mistreatment of magical creatures before. He and Scorpius were well practiced and carefully avoiding each others' eyes when Rose got going on some case her mother was working on. But this… this wasn't right.

"I'm glad Hermione changed things," James mumbled.

Teddy nodded and looked back down at the book.

"**Don't — what are you doing?" Harry hissed, springing up and pulling Dobby back onto the bed **

"Good. Don't let him hurt himself," Lily breathed.

— **Hedwig had woken up with a particularly loud screech and was beating her wings wildly against the bars of her cage.**

"**Dobby had to punish himself, sir," said the elf, who had gone slightly cross-eyed. "Dobby almost spoke ill of his family, sir. . . ."**

"Yes, Merlin forbid he _almost _speak ill of the twisted people who make him beat himself up and dress him in a dirty old pillowcase," Fred growled.

"Who do you think his family is?" Albus asked suddenly.

The others just shrugged. It could be anybody, any pure-bloods anyways.

"**Your family?"**

"**The wizard family Dobby serves, sir. . . . Dobby is a houseelf — bound to serve one house and one family forever. . . ."**

"That would really suck," Fred lamented.

"Yeah, and it would get dead boring," James added, making a face.

"**Do they know you're here?" asked Harry curiously.**

**Dobby shuddered.**

"**Oh, no, sir, no . . . Dobby will have to punish himself most grievously for coming to see you, sir. Dobby will have to shut his ears in the oven door for this. If they ever knew, sir —"**

Everybody made horrified noises, Albus, Lily, and Hugo looked sickened, Rose was fuming, and all the rest were revolted.

Scorpius was shocked. His was one of the few pure-blood families that didn't have a house-elf, but his parents – particularly his father – hated the things. Until he'd gone to Hogwarts and started sneaking into the kitchens with Al, Scorpius had been rather disgusted by the little things. He'd only seen them a few times, but the way his father spoke about them, he'd imagined them to be dirty, evil little beasts and was very grateful there wasn't one in his house. The house-elves in the Hogwarts kitchens, however, did not fit this description. They were clean, friendly, and eager to serve and Scorpius had grown rather fond of them. He had no idea how horribly people treated them.

"**But won't they notice if you shut your ears in the oven door?"**

"**Dobby doubts it, sir. Dobby is always having to punish himself for something, sir. They lets Dobby get on with it, sir. Sometimes they reminds me to do extra punishments. . . ."**

"These people are sick bastards," Fred stated matter-of-factly.

"Probably even more than we know," Teddy said darkly. "It's pretty likely they were Death Eaters. A lot of pure-bloods had house-elves, but only the ones who were hard-core against Muggles and… well, anyone or anything that wasn't a wizard would be so cruel to their servants."

"**But why don't you leave? Escape?"**

"**A house-elf must be set free, sir. And the family will never set Dobby free . . . **

"But he'll get free somehow," Lily smiled, thinking of the inscription on the rock.

"I hope he gets to enjoy it," James said, uncharacteristically somber.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked.

"I mean, that engraving might just mean that he's finally free because he died and doesn't have to serve his family anymore," James explained.

"I'm sure he was free before then," Teddy said reassuringly, because Lily's bottom lip had begun to tremble.

**Dobby will serve the family until he dies, sir. . . ."**

James looked at everyone pointedly and Teddy scowled at him because Lily looked like she might cry again.

**Harry stared.**

"**And I thought I had it bad staying here for another four weeks,"** **he said. "This makes the Dursleys sound almost human. **

"Almost," Teddy muttered in an undertone, remembering what happened in the last chapter with a rush of anger.

**Can't anyone help you? Can't I?"**

"You will, I'm sure of it," Rose told the book.

"Always the hero, wanting to fighting for the underdog," Fred grinned.

**Almost at once, Harry wished he hadn't spoken. Dobby dissolved again into wails of gratitude.**

"Of all the house-elves to break into his bedroom, he had to get the noisiest," James sighed, shaking his head. "Dad's got the worst luck ever."

"**Please," Harry whispered frantically, "please be quiet. If the Dursleys hear anything, if they know you're here —"**

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would go over well," Fred said sarcastically. "Petunia, dear, look at this delightful little toad-thing I found in Harry's room! Let's invite him to join the dinner party! He's probably really good at charades!"

"**Harry Potter asks if he can help Dobby . . . Dobby has heard of your greatness, sir, but of your goodness, Dobby never knew. . . ."**

"Dad'll love that," Albus muttered.

**Harry, who was feeling distinctly hot in the face, said, "Whatever you've heard about my greatness is a load of rubbish. I'm not even top of my year at Hogwarts; that's Hermione, she —"**

**But he stopped quickly, because thinking about Hermione was painful.**

Hugo looked down sadly; he was disappointed that his parents had ever let his uncle think they'd forgotten him. He still couldn't believe they really had.

"**Harry Potter is humble and modest," **

"You ain't seen nothin' yet," James grinned.

Teddy snorted. "Harry's only comment after the final battle was that he was only one player in Voldemort's defeat and to go talk to the other heroes."

**said Dobby reverently, his orb-like eyes aglow. "Harry Potter speaks not of his triumph over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named —"**

"**Voldemort?" said Harry.**

**Dobby clapped his hands over his bat ears and moaned, "Ah, speak not the name, sir! Speak not the name!"**

"**Sorry," said Harry quickly. "I know lots of people don't like it. My friend Ron —"**

**He stopped again. Thinking about Ron was painful, too.**

"If Dad doesn't show up by the end of this chapter, I'm gonna be really mad at him," Hugo announced, crossing his arms.

**Dobby leaned toward Harry, his eyes wide as headlights.**

"**Dobby heard tell," he said hoarsely, "that Harry Potter met the Dark Lord for a second time, just weeks ago . . . that Harry Potter escaped **_**yet again.**_**"**

**Harry nodded and Dobby's eyes suddenly shone with tears.**

"**Ah, sir," he gasped, dabbing his face with a corner of the grubby pillowcase he was wearing. "Harry Potter is valiant and bold! He has braved so many dangers already! But Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him, even if he **_**does **_**have to shut his ears in the oven door later. . . . **_**Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.**_**"**

Everyone's eyes snapped to the book.

"What the bloody hell is he talking about?" James demanded.

"What's he supposed to do? Stay with the Dursleys? Not even if Voldemort himself was declared headmaster," Fred said angrily.

"Keep reading Teddy," Rose said. "He's got to have a good reason for it."

**There was a silence broken only by the chink of knives and forks from downstairs and the distant rumble of Uncle Vernon's voice.**

"**W-what?" Harry stammered. "But I've got to go back — term starts on September first. It's all that's keeping me going. You don't know what it's like here. I don't **_**belong **_**here. I belong in your world — at Hogwarts."**

"**No, no, no," squeaked Dobby, shaking his head so hard his ears flapped.**

"Yes, yes, yes," James countered, nodding vigorously.

"**Harry Potter must stay where he is safe. **

"Which is not with the Dursleys!" James said loudly. "They tried to hit him with a FRYING PAN!"

**He is too great, too good, to lose. If Harry Potter goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger."**

"What else is new?" Albus muttered, thinking about his dad's first year.

"**Why?" said Harry in surprise.**

"Really? After last year that _surprises_ him?" James said incredulously.

"But it _only _surprises him," Teddy said, looking a little sad. "Most twelve-year-olds would be more than a little freaked out if someone told them that they'd be in mortal danger if they went back to school. Harry's just used to it."

"**There is a plot, Harry Potter. A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year," whispered Dobby, suddenly trembling all over.**

"What kind of plot?" James demanded at the same time Fred asked, "What sort of terrible things?"

"**Dobby has known it for months, sir. Harry Potter must not put himself in peril. He is too important, sir!"**

"**What terrible things?" said Harry at once. "Who's plotting them?"**

**Dobby made a funny choking noise and then banged his head frantically against the wall.**

"**All right!" cried Harry, grabbing the elf 's arm to stop him. "You can't tell me. I understand. **

"What good is a warning like that if he can't even explain it!" James said in frustration.

"There's no way Dad's gonna listen to him if he won't even say what's supposed to be so horrible," Albus agreed, bighting his lip. He didn't know what made him think so, but he was pretty sure Dobby was telling the truth. Which meant it was more than likely that his father would end up nearly dying _again_. This ought to be fun to read about.

**But why are you warning **_**me**_**?" A sudden, unpleasant thought struck him. "Hang on — this hasn't got anything to do with Vol — sorry — with You-Know-Who, has it?**

"Oh, I hope not," Lily shuddered. She didn't need any more reasons for nightmares.

"I hope so," Teddy said grimly. "If it's not Voldemort, that means there's another psycho out there trying to murder Harry. Sorry," he added, wincing when he saw Lily, Albus, and Hugo blanch.

**You could just shake or nod," he added hastily as Dobby's head tilted worryingly close to the wall again.**

**Slowly, Dobby shook his head.**

After Teddy's last dark comment they weren't sure whether to be relieved or more terrified about this. Even though the room was full of warm morning sunlight, the group seemed to shiver at the unknown threat. Lily scooted closer to Albus once more.

"**Not — not **_**He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, **_**sir —"**

**But Dobby's eyes were wide and he seemed to be trying to give Harry a hint. Harry, however, was completely lost.**

"Don't feel bad, Dad. I think we all are," James told the book reassuringly. "What the he-eck is that supposed to mean?" he asked, changing directions mid-word at a stern look from Rose.

"**He hasn't got a brother, has he?"**

Scorpius shuddered and he wasn't the only one. That would be bad.

**Dobby shook his head, his eyes wider than ever.**

"**Well then, I can't think who else would have a chance of making horrible things happen at Hogwarts," said Harry. "I mean, there's Dumbledore, for one thing — you know who Dumbledore is, don't you?"**

"I don't think there's an intelligent mind out there who hasn't heard of Dumbledore," Rose said off-handedly.

**Dobby bowed his head.**

"**Albus Dumbledore is the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever had. **

"That's unusual," Teddy said, raising an eyebrow.

"How d'you mean?" James inquired.

"House-elves usually reflect the views of their owners. There aren't many pure-bloods in that time that would think that way about Dumbledore. I think Fred was right, Dobby is a strange elf. I just mean," he hurried to amend when he noticed Rose narrowing her eyes, "that _if _he's telling the truth, he not only reveres Dumbledore and Harry, but also went to drastic measures to try to warn Harry about danger. Not many house-elves would do that."

**Dobby knows it, sir. Dobby has heard Dumbledore's powers rival those of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the height of his strength. But, sir" — Dobby's voice dropped to an urgent whisper — "there are powers Dumbledore doesn't . . . powers no decent wizard . . ."**

**And before Harry could stop him, Dobby bounded off the bed, seized Harry's desk lamp, and started beating himself around the head with earsplitting yelps.**

Everyone winced.

"His family must be really messed up if that constitutes as 'speaking ill' of them," Albus said quietly.

**A sudden silence fell downstairs. **

"Damn it," James breathed into the silence that had fallen in the room at these words.

**Two seconds later Harry, heart thudding madly, heard Uncle Vernon coming into the hall, calling, "Dudley must have left his television on again, the little tyke!"**

"**Quick! In the closet!" hissed Harry, stuffing Dobby in, shutting the door, and flinging himself onto the bed just as the door handle turned.**

"**What — the — **_**devil **_**— are — you — doing?" said Uncle Vernon through gritted teeth, his face horribly close to Harry's. "You've just ruined the punch line of my Japanese golfer joke. . . .**

"Oh no, not the Japanese golfer joke!" Fred cried dramatically.

"Dad, how could you!" James exclaimed, flinging up his hands.

"How will he ever recover from that one?"

"He might not get that new vacation home that they won't let you set foot in!"

Teddy cut through their ever-escalating dramatics by continuing to read.

**One more sound and you'll wish you'd never been born, boy!"**

Teddy kept reading through gritted teeth, gripping the book so tightly that his knuckles were white.

**He stomped flat-footed from the room.**

**Shaking, Harry let Dobby out of the closet.**

"**See what it's like here?" he said. "See why I've got to go back to Hogwarts? It's the only place I've got — well, I **_**think **_**I've got friends."**

"You _do _have friends," Rose sighed. "Like I said before, they're just being stupid."

"**Friends who don't even **_**write **_**to Harry Potter?" said Dobby slyly.**

Hugo's head snapped up. "How does he know that?"

"**I expect they've just been — wait a minute," said Harry, frowning. "How do **_**you **_**know my friends haven't been writing to me?"**

**Dobby shuffled his feet.**

"He's been stealing Mum and Dad's letters!" Hugo shouted, jumping to his feet.

"Hugo, shut up before Molly comes bursting in here," Rose hissed at her brother.

"But he's been stealing the letters Mum and Dad wrote to make Harry think they didn't care about him! To make him think he really was all alone!"

"I know, it sucks, but at least Harry knows they really were writing now," Rose said soothingly as Hugo sank slowly back to his seat.

"**Harry Potter mustn't be angry with Dobby. Dobby did it for the best —"**

"Yeah, the best," Hugo muttered angrily. "Making a kid who already gets ignored by his family think his friends have forgotten him too is definitely the best."

"_**Have you been stopping my letters**_**?"**

"**Dobby has them here, sir," said the elf. Stepping nimbly out of Harry's reach, he pulled a thick wad of envelopes from the inside of the pillowcase he was wearing. Harry could make out Hermione's neat writing, Ron's untidy scrawl, and even a scribble that looked as though it was from the Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid. **

**Dobby blinked anxiously up at Harry.**

"**Harry Potter mustn't be angry. . . . Dobby hoped . . . if Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten him . . . Harry Potter might not want to go back to school, sir. . . ."**

**Harry wasn't listening. He made a grab for the letters, but Dobby jumped out of reach.**

"**Harry Potter will have them, sir, if he gives Dobby his word that he will not return to Hogwarts. Ah, sir, this is a danger you must not face! **

"Alright this danger thing is starting to freak me out," Lily said nervously.

"Is he talking about the Chamber of Secrets?" Fred asked Teddy. None of them knew much about it, only that it had been opened a couple of times recently.

"I would think that's what he's talking about since it's the tile of the book, but I don't know much about it other than it's a hidden chamber that supposedly would unleash a terror on the school if it was ever opened."

"Well, that's comforting," Rose mumbled.

**Say you won't go back, sir!"**

"**No," said Harry angrily. **

"And since Dad's the most honest person in the world, he wouldn't think about _lying_, would he?" James grumbled.

"It's probably a good thing he didn't," Teddy said. "House-elves have powerful magic of their own. Dobby might have done something that would make it impossibly or very dangerous for Harry to break his word once he gave it."

"How much do you know about Elf magic?" Rose asked interestedly.

Teddy opened his mouth, but James cut him off. "Not now, kay Rosie? You and Teddy can go into professor mode on your own time."

Rose scowled at him, and Teddy kept reading, grinning a little.

"**Give me my friends' letters!"**

"**Then Harry Potter leaves Dobby no choice," said the elf sadly.**

**Before Harry could move, Dobby had darted to the bedroom door, pulled it open, and sprinted down the stairs. Mouth dry, stomach lurching, Harry sprang after him, trying not to make a sound. He jumped the last six steps, landing catlike on the hall carpet, looking around for Dobby. From the dining room he heard Uncle Vernon saying, ". . . tell Petunia that very**

**funny story about those American plumbers, Mr. Mason. She's been dying to hear . . ."**

**Harry ran up the hall into the kitchen and felt his stomach disappear.**

**Aunt Petunia's masterpiece of a pudding, the mountain of cream and sugared violets, was floating up near the ceiling. On top of a cupboard in the corner crouched Dobby.**

"**No," croaked Harry. "Please . . . they'll kill me. . . ."**

"He'd better not do it if he wants to keep Harry alive," Hugo said anxiously.

"He better not do it," Teddy growled.

"**Harry Potter must say he's not going back to school —"**

"**Dobby . . . please . . ."**

"**Say it, sir —"**

"**I can't —"**

**Dobby gave him a tragic look.**

James swore, smacking the end of Scorpius's bed in frustration.

"**Then Dobby must do it, sir, for Harry Potter's own good."**

**The pudding fell to the floor with a heart-stopping crash. Cream splattered the windows and walls as the dish shattered. With a crack like a whip, Dobby vanished.**

Teddy's voice was pained as he read this.

**There were screams from the dining room and Uncle Vernon burst into the kitchen to find Harry, rigid with shock, covered from head to foot in Aunt Petunia's pudding.**

Everyone winced. This did not bode well.

**At first, it looked as though Uncle Vernon would manage to gloss the whole thing over. **

"Fat chance," James muttered darkly, making Lily's hopeful look vanish.

**("Just our nephew — very disturbed —**

There were several angry hisses at this. Teddy was seething.

**meeting strangers upsets him, so we kept him upstairs. . . .") **

"Yeah, no neglect going on here at all," Teddy hissed furiously.

**He shooed the shocked Masons back into the dining room, promised**

**Harry he would flay him to within an inch of his life when the Masons**

**had left, **

Anxious looks were exchanged.

"You don't think …he really did stuff like that?" Rose whispered, tears pricking her eyes as she tried to push away the idea.

"He better not have," Teddy answered in a deadly calm voice. His eyes were glinting dangerously.

Lily shifted a little closer to Albus. None of them had ever seen Teddy this mad before. Not even when James had accidentally knocked the photo album of his parents into the fire. He kept reading in the same deadly calm voice.

**and handed him a mop. Aunt Petunia dug some ice cream out of the freezer and Harry, still shaking, started scrubbing the kitchen clean.**

**Uncle Vernon might still have been able to make his deal — if it hadn't been for the owl.**

**Aunt Petunia was just passing around a box of after-dinner mints when a huge barn owl swooped through the dining room window, dropped a letter on Mrs. Mason's head, and swooped out again. Mrs. Mason screamed like a banshee and ran from the house shouting about lunatics. Mr. Mason stayed just long enough to tell the Dursleys that his wife was mortally afraid of birds of all shapes and sizes, and to ask whether this was their idea of a joke.**

James groaned and buried his head in his arms. When things went wrong, they had to go really wrong, it seemed.

**Harry stood in the kitchen, clutching the mop for support, as Uncle Vernon advanced on him, a demonic glint in his tiny eyes.**

Lily bit her lip while Albus stared with wide eyes at the book.

"**Read it!" he hissed evilly, brandishing the letter the owl had delivered. "Go on — read it!"**

**Harry took it. It did not contain birthday greetings.**

**Dear Mr. Potter,**

**We have received intelligence that a Hover Charm was used at your place of residence this evening at twelve minutes past nine.**

**As you know, underage wizards are not permitted to perform spells outside school, and further spellwork on your part may lead to expulsion from said school (Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C).**

**We would also ask you to remember that any magical activity that risks notice by members of the non-magical community (Muggles) is a serious offense under section 13 of the International Confederation of Warlocks' Statute of Secrecy.**

**Enjoy your holidays!**

James snorted mirthlessly at these words.

**Yours sincerely,**

**Mafalda Hopkirk**

**improper use of magic office**

_**Ministry of Magic**_

**Harry looked up from the letter and gulped.**

The room braced itself.

"**You didn't tell us you weren't allowed to use magic outside school," said Uncle Vernon, a mad gleam dancing in his eyes. "Forgot to mention it. . . . Slipped your mind, I daresay. . . ."**

**He was bearing down on Harry like a great bulldog, all his teeth bared. "Well, I've got news for you, boy. . . . I'm locking you up. . . . You're never going back to that school . . . never . . . and if you try and magic yourself out — they'll expel you!"**

**And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry back upstairs.**

"They wouldn't really do that?" Rose asked, horrorstruck. "I mean, no literally surely!"

"I dunno, he seems to be thinking pretty literally to me," James growled.

Teddy did not say anything. He just kept reading in a tight voice.

**Uncle Vernon was as bad as his word. The following morning, he paid a man to fit bars on Harry's window. **

Teddy's voice cracked on these words, something it hadn't done since he was a teenager.

Albus felt his mind going numb. This was just one ruined dinner party! Beside him, he could feel Rose trembling with anger. Scorpius had gone very pale. Lily's mouth was open and her eyes were huge. Hugo looked about the same. James and Fred looked livid.

Teddy took a deep, shaky breath and kept going as if peeling back a bandage to see how bad the injury really was.

**He himself fitted a cat-flap in the bedroom door, so that**

Teddy choked a little bit on the next words.

**small amounts of food could be pushed inside three times a day. They let Harry out to use the bathroom morning and evening. Otherwise, he was locked in his room around the clock.**

Teddy flung the book away from him and leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was muttering to himself and looked like he might be sick.

Scorpius could not believe anyone could treat a kid like that. These people almost made him see why Voldemort might go after Muggles, but he dispelled this idea immediately. Harry _lived _with them and he still fought. Nothing justified that behavior, but nothing justified the way Harry was being treated in the book either.

Scorpius glanced at Albus and was immediately concerned by his friend's pale, blank look. Albus was staring at the book Teddy had discarded as if it had turned into a gory war image. He _could not _believe that his father had been turned into a prisoner –a literal prisoner, bars and locks in all – in his own home. It was completely… he couldn't even find a word to fit it. And the worst bit was it wasn't even Harry's fault. How in the world did his father survive living with the Durlseys?

Beside him, Rose was Weasley-red with anger, but she asked in a quavering voice, "Was that the end of the chapter?"

Teddy just shook his head. Muttering, "I'll be back in a second," he lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the bedroom and down a flight of stairs to the nearest bathroom. He leaned over the sink and splashed cold water over his face. How the hell did Harry come out of this as normal as he was? They _starved _him, locked him up and cut him off from magic, from the whole world. And this wasn't even the first time. The beginning of the first book made it seem like that was not an unusual occurrence before he got his Hogwarts letter.

Was it possible that Harry didn't even understand how wrong that was? Obviously he knew it wasn't normal or right, but he seemed to just accept that that was how he was treated at the Dursleys. Did he not understand how _horrible _it really was? Did he know – beyond the shadow of a doubt – that he didn't deserve that? Teddy wondered how much damage the Dursleys really had done. How much of Harry's legendary humbleness and modesty came from a childhood of having his spirits continually trampled? How much of that self-sacrificing tendency came from constantly being told and shown that he was less than nothing?

Teddy doubled over, feeling like he really might be sick. He took a few deep, steadying breaths. If Harry could forget this, let it go the way he had, if he could find the strength to do that after going through all this, Teddy supposed he should be able to, too. Then again was it healthy that Harry had let all this go? Teddy didn't know. He felt like a little kid again. He wanted to run to Harry and curl up in his arms and let him explain why everything was okay again.

But he couldn't. Teddy had to be the adult this time. There were seven kids who had just found out all of this, too and they expected Teddy to be the grown up and take their cues from him. He doubted the younger kids really understood the magnitude of what the Dursleys had done. It was probably better that way. Teddy could understand why Harry had never told them about this sort of thing. He wondered if Harry had told _anybody _about this sort of thing.

Employing some of the techniques he'd learned in Auror training, Teddy pulled himself together, vowing that he'd talk to Harry about this soon. He returned to the little bedroom feeling like the hour he'd been up had been a week.

"You okay Teddy?" James asked nervously.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Teddy answered, glad that his voice sounded close to his usual calm tone. He forced himself to pick up the book and rifle through it to the right page, noticing as did so that the others visibly relaxed at his composure. Al still looked like he might pass out and Rose was still trembling a little, but the others were starting to look normal again.

**Three days later, **

Teddy closed his eyes briefly at these words, shaking his head with a completely humorless smile on his face. _Three days_. He took another deep breath and kept going, trying to keep it together.

**the Dursleys were showing no sign of relenting, and Harry couldn't see any way out of his situation. He lay on his bed watching the sun sinking behind the bars on the window and wondered miserably what was going to happen to him.**

"Well at least he's showing that optimistic spirit of his," Fred said in very weak attempt to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

**What was the good of magicking himself out of his room if Hogwarts would expel him for doing it? **

"He's got a point there," Scorpius couldn't help but mumbling.

**Yet life at Privet Drive had reached an all-time low. Now that the Dursleys knew they weren't going to wake up as fruit bats, he had lost his only weapon. Dobby might have saved Harry from horrible happenings at Hogwarts, but the way things were going, he'd probably starve to death anyway.**

The last half of the sentence caught in Teddy's throat and came out a bit strangled. He hoped very much that this was the pessimistic side of Harry talking, though he doubted you could fit much food through a cat-flap.

Albus involuntarily let out a strangled noise and Rose looked over at him for the first time after hearing about the cat-flap. She slipped an arm around him rested her chin on his hunched shoulder. Teddy looked at him too and thought Al might understand a little better than the others. It didn't really surprise him. Rose was the bookworm and James got good marks without a whole lot of effort, but when it came to perception, Albus had a knack for it. Sometimes it was a blessing, but other times, like now, it was more of a curse.

**The cat-flap rattled and Aunt Petunia's hand appeared, pushing a bowl of canned soup into the room. Harry, whose insides were aching with hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it. The soup was stone-cold, but he drank half of it in one gulp. **

James made a face at the description and Teddy's hopes that it was mostly exaggeration slipped considerably.

**Then he crossed the room to Hedwig's cage and tipped the soggy vegetables at the bottom of the bowl into her empty food tray. She ruffled her feathers and gave him a look of deep disgust.**

"I'm with the bird on that one," James mumbled.

"He's sharing his pitiful dinner with his \owl?" Fred asked. "He really is selfless."

"**It's no good turning your beak up at it — that's all we've got," said Harry grimly.**

**He put the empty bowl back on the floor next to the cat-flap and lay back down on the bed, somehow even hungrier than he had been before the soup.**

**Supposing he was still alive in another four weeks, **

"Now that's a bit melodramatic," Fred said.

James shrugged. If he had to live on cold canned soup, he didn't know if he'd make it a month.

**what would happen if he didn't turn up at Hogwarts? Would someone be sent to see why he hadn't come back? Would they be able to make the**

**Dursleys let him go?**

"Yes and yes," James answered. "Look on the up side a little, Dad. The world's not that bad."

You can't exactly blame him for being pessimistic, Teddy thought. Not when just about everything always goes bad anyways, at least at Privet Drive. Harry wasn't used to things going good for him yet.

**The room was growing dark. Exhausted, stomach rumbling, mind spinning over the same unanswerable questions, Harry fell into an uneasy sleep.**

"They aren't unanswerable, Dad, I just told you!" James said exasperatedly.

"You don't know he can't hear you, right?" Rose asked earnestly.

James only looked at her blankly while Fred cracked up.

There attempt at getting back to normal was starting to work the tension from the room, but only by modules. What they'd just read was still filling up most of their minds. Alblus wasn't really paying attention to the side conversation at all and Teddy was just grateful it distracted most of the others.

**He dreamed that he was on show in a zoo, with a card reading underage wizard attached to his cage. **

"Weird," James said.

**People goggled through the bars at him as he lay, starving and weak, on a bed of straw. He saw Dobby's face in the crowd and shouted out, asking for help, but Dobby called, "Harry Potter is safe there, sir!" and vanished. Then the Dursleys appeared and Dudley rattled the bars of the cage, laughing at him.**

"**Stop it," Harry muttered as the rattling pounded in his sore head. "Leave me alone . . . cut it out . . . I'm trying to sleep. . . ."**

**He opened his eyes. Moonlight was shining through the bars on the window.**

"That description 'through the bars on his window' is probably one of the saddest things I've ever heard," Rose said miserably.

**And someone **_**was **_**goggling through the bars at him: **

Everyone's heads snapped up hopefully. This _had _to be who they thought it was, but they held their breath until the book said so for sure.

**A freckle-faced, red-haired, long-nosed someone.**

With each description of the 'someone' outside Harry's window, grins spread wider on each of their faces.

**Ron Weasley was outside Harry's window.**

"ABOUT TIME!" Hugo roared, jumping to his feet with all the rest. Teddy hastily cast the Muffliato charm on the bedroom door as everybody broke into loud cheering.

"What the hell took so long!" James bellowed, jumping up and down on Albus's bed, bent double because of the sloping ceiling.

"Thank god that's over," Albus sighed, sagging back onto the mass of blankets on the floor.

Teddy agreed with him whole-heartedly – as did everybody else – he didn't think he could have stood it if it went on any longer.

Glad to be done reading, he flung the book away from him, nodding to Rose when she looked at him inquiringly.

"I think we've got time for one more chapter before breakfast is ready," she announced, looking down at her watch.

"I'll read!" James said enthusiastically diving headfirst off the bed for the book and landing on the floor with a heavy thud. "The story should be getting way better! Look what the next chapter's called!"


	3. The Burrow

**Chapter 3-The Burrow**

"Awesome!" Fred exclaimed, to impatient to wait two seconds for James to read the next chapter title and leaning over his shoulder to see it himself.

"What is it?" Hugo asked curiously. "The Dursleys get turned into dung beetles and stuck in jar?"

"I wish," Teddy muttered as James shook his head.

"Well?" Rose said impatiently after thirty seconds of everyone staring at James in silence.

"Oh, is the guessing part over?" he said as if caught by surprise, looking at all of them innocently.

"What's the chapter called James!" Rose huffed.

"Patients, my dear Rosie," Fred chided, shaking his head at her and clicking his tongue in a very Grandma-Weasley-ish way.

"Start reading James!" Lily erupted, pulling what looked like a small blue bouncy ball out of her pocket and waving it threateningly in her brother's face. "Or I'm setting this off in your room as soon as we get home!"

James pretended to reel back in horror. "Where on earth did you get that Lils?"

"Your trunk," Lily replied sweetly.

"When did my innocent baby sister turn so… devious?" James muttered, blinking at Lily as though in awe.

"You've never noticed this side of her before?" Albus asked incredulously.

"Course I have," James said, snapping back to reality and returning his brother's incredulous look. "But every time it crops up I still have to wonder when it happened. Doubt even Lily herself knows, it happened so long ago."

"Ten years ago," Albus clarified.

"One of the great mysteries of the world!" James lamented, shaking his head woefully.

"James!" Lily and Rose snapped at the same time, though Lily was a looking rather proud of herself.

"Get on with the book!"

"Right, reading…"

**Chapter Three The Burrow**

"Excellent!" Hugo and Lily said happily and then grinned at each other at their synchronization. Rose and Scorpius exchanged grins and Albus managed a relieved smile. Things would be alright now for sure. The Burrow was the best place ever, of that Albus was sure, and if anybody needed the inexplicable comfort and contentedness that seemed to hang thickly around his grandparents' house, it was the twelve-year-old Harry in the book. Albus brightened a little more at the prospect of reading what the Burrow was like when his mother and uncles were growing up.

"**Ron!" breathed Harry, creeping to the window and pushing it up so they could talk through the bars. "Ron, how did you — What the — ?"**

"That is a good point, how did Dad get there?" Rose asked, suddenly suspicious.

Hugo looked at her blankly. "He's Dad. He found a way."

Rose restrained herself from rolling her eyes at her little brother only because he was adorable when he was so innocent.

**Harry's mouth fell open as the full impact of what he was seeing hit him. Ron was leaning out of the back window of an old turquoise car, which was parked **_**in midair. **_

James gaped at the book for a second. Then he and Fred went wild, like a pair of Weasley Wildfire Wizbangs.

"Ron's got a car!"

"A _flying _car!"

"A _turquoise _flying car! Even Teddy would love that!"

"Hey, what d'you mean 'even Teddy'?"

"Well, last time I asked you if we could take a car for a joy-ride you said no –"

"That's because we were in the middle of Muggle London and there was a Dalmatian in the back seat!"

"He wouldn't have minded. He looked bored anyways –"

"James, UNCLE RON HAD A FLYING TURQUOISE CAR!"

"Right! That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard! Where d'you reckon he got it?"

"Think he stole it?"

"You two are way too excited at the prospect of grand theft auto."

"Grand theft _flying _auto. It's way wickeder."

"Yeah, anyone can jack a _regular _car. It takes real talent to pick one that flies."

"Can you please keep reading?"

"About the flying car? OF COURSE!"

Rose blinked. Well… that was way easier when there was a flying car in the story.

**Grinning at Harry from the front seats were Fred and George, Ron's elder twin brothers.**

"Should have known they were there!" Fred exclaimed jubilantly, although his conversation with Roxanne the night before bobbed in the back of his head for some reason. He pushed it away.

"**All right, Harry?" asked George.**

"**What's been going on?" said Ron. "Why haven't you been answering my letters? **

"Because an mad house-elf stole them all and tried to make Harry think you'd forgotten about him," Hugo said promptly, making a face.

"Don't forget the bit about his owl being locked up all summer so he couldn't write to anybody," Albus added in a low voice and Rose and Scorpius glanced at him worriedly. The last chapter seemed to have hit him hard.

**I've asked you to stay about twelve times, **

"See? That's what it's supposed to be like," Hugo said emphatically to no one in particular, nodding approvingly at the book.

**And then Dad came home and said you'd got an official warning for using**

**magic in front of Muggles —"**

"**It wasn't me — and how did he know?"**

"**He works for the Ministry," said Ron. "You **_**know **_**we're not supposed to do spells outside school —"**

"He just _said _he didn't do it!" James sighed exasperatedly.

"That's gonna be on his record forever, isn't it?" Scorpius asked suddenly.

"Er, yeah, I guess it is," Teddy agreed.

"That's not fair," Rose said indignantly. "They should have a better system than that."

"**You should talk," said Harry, staring at the floating car.**

"That doesn't count!" James exclaimed.

"Yeah, they only stole it, not enchanted it!" Fred added, waving a hand vaguely.

"**Oh, this doesn't count," said Ron. "We're only borrowing this. It's Dad's, **

Fred and James sighed in disappointment as their visions of flying-car-jacking in the dead of night vanished. But they brightened almost at once.

"_Grandpa _did that?"

"That's amazing!"

"What do you think happened to it?" James asked eagerly. What he wouldn't give to take that baby for a late-night spin…

"No," Teddy said firmly, seeing the look he had become familiar with at a very early age on his surrogate brother's face. "You'd break your neck, or more probably a famous monument and that would mean a lot of paperwork that us trainees would get stuck with."

James pouted at him.

_**we **_**didn't enchant it. But doing magic in front of those Muggles you live with —"**

"For the last time, it wasn't him!" Rose exclaimed. Her father hadn't even been in the book two pages and she was already getting frustrated with him.

"**I told you, I didn't — but it'll take too long to explain now — look, can you tell them at Hogwarts that the Dursleys have locked me up and won't let me come back, and obviously I can't magic myself out, because the Ministry'll think that's the second spell I've done in three days, so —"**

"He doesn't really think they'd just leave him there, does he?" Hugo asked, sitting forward and looking incredulous.

"**Stop gibbering," said Ron. "We've come to take you home with us."**

"**But you can't magic me out either —"**

"Does he have so little faith in them?" James asked sadly.

"Dad doesn't need magic to be brilliant! Course, it tends to help out, but he doesn't _need _it," Fred said.

"**We don't need to," said Ron, jerking his head toward the front seat and grinning. "You forget who I've got with me."**

"**Tie that around the bars," said Fred, throwing the end of a rope to Harry.**

"**If the Dursleys wake up, I'm dead," said Harry **

"So they'll make sure they don't wake up," Fred said patiently.

**as he tied the rope tightly around a bar and Fred revved up the car.**

"**Don't worry," said Fred, "and stand back."**

**Harry moved back into the shadows next to Hedwig, who seemed to have realized how important this was and kept still and silent. **

"I wish we had an owl as brilliant as Hedwig," Lily said sadly.

"Yeah, that little fuzz-ball Mum you for your birthday won't shut up for two seconds," James complained.

"Shut up, James! Mitsy's way smarter than Owen. He brings my letters to Al half the time instead of you."

"It is not my owl's fault that Al looks like me," James said with dignity while Albus rolled his eyes. Owen was the worst delivery owl he had ever met. Even Ron said that their old family owl Errol had been more reliable than Owen. And from the stories Albus's uncles told, that was saying something.

**The car revved louder and louder and suddenly, with a crunching noise, the bars were pulled clean out of the window as Fred drove straight up in the air. **

There was a deafening amount of cheering at these words that made Teddy glad he'd had the foresight to use the muffliato charm.

**Harry ran back to the window to see the bars dangling a few feet above the ground. Panting, Ron hoisted them up into the car. Harry listened anxiously, but there was no sound from the Dursleys' bedroom.**

Most of them let out a breath they hadn't know they were holding.

**When the bars were safely in the back seat with Ron, Fred reversed as close as possible to Harry's window.**

"**Get in," Ron said.**

"**But all my Hogwarts stuff — my wand — my broomstick —"**

"Oh – yeah, that could be tricky," Scorpius muttered nervously. He didn't know what exactly would happen if the Dursleys woke up, but it would not be good and he was a bit afraid of what the others might do if the Dursleys put one more toe out of line in this book.

"Oh, how little you know, Scorp," James said, shaking his head. "The art of cat burglary is an essential skill for any aspiring prankster."

"This'll be a piece of cake," Fred grinned, a little jealous that he would never have the opportunity to perform s prison-break like this.

"**Where is it?"**

"**Locked in the cupboard under the stairs, and I can't get out of this room —"**

"**No problem," said George from the front passenger seat. "Out of the way, Harry."**

**Fred and George climbed catlike through the window into Harry's room. You had to hand it to them, thought Harry, as George took an ordinary hairpin from his pocket and started to pick the lock.**

"Yeah you do have to hand it to them," James agreed with his father, grinning at Fred who grinned back.

But his sister's voice floated out of the back of his mind. Fred remembered Roxanne's reason for not wanting to read the books. _It would just remind me of everything we lost, show us how much more we lost, and I don't want to think about that every time I look at them all._

His father had taught him to pick locks when he was seven. He'd noticed, but not really registered at the time, the sadness in his dad's eyes during that lesson. Is this what he'd be seeing every time he looked at his parents? Would this easy, trouble-making teamwork that had long-since been swallowed by time and war haunt his thoughts?

No, Fred decided firmly. He wasn't going to let it. His father didn't crumble under the memories and he of all people had it the hardest. Fred Weasley the second doubted his namesake would be very proud of him if he let sad memories take all the fun out of something. Besides, Fred knew both his father and uncle would be deeply offended if he couldn't marvel properly at their genius.

So Fred kept grinning.

"**A lot of wizards think it's a waste of time, knowing this sort of Muggle trick," said Fred, **

"And they'll be begging for help if they're ever stuck without a wand," James said smugly.

"**but we feel they're skills worth learning, even if they are a bit slow."**

**There was a small click and the door swung open.**

"**So — we'll get your trunk — you grab anything you need from your room and hand it out to Ron," whispered George.**

"**Watch out for the bottom stair — it creaks," Harry whispered back as the twins disappeared onto the dark landing.**

**Harry dashed around his room, collecting his things and passing them out of the window to Ron. Then he went to help Fred and George heave his trunk up the stairs. Harry heard Uncle Vernon cough.**

"They better hurry up," Hugo said anxiously.

**At last, panting, they reached the landing, then carried the trunk through Harry's room to the open window. Fred climbed back into the car to pull with Ron, and Harry and George pushed from the bedroom side. Inch by inch, the trunk slid through the window.**

**Uncle Vernon coughed again.**

"Get out of there quick!" Rose muttered as anxiously as her brother.

"**A bit more," panted Fred, who was pulling from inside the car. "One good push —"**

**Harry and George threw their shoulders against the trunk and it slid out of the window into the back seat of the car.**

"**Okay, let's go," George whispered.**

**But as Harry climbed onto the windowsill there came a sudden loud screech from behind him, **

"He _forgot_ Hedwig!" Lily cried in disbelief as James swore.

**followed immediately by the thunder of Uncle Vernon's voice.**

"This is not good," Hugo muttered, wringing his hands.

"**THAT RUDDY OWL!"**

"**I've forgotten Hedwig!"**

**Harry tore back across the room as the landing light clicked on — he snatched up Hedwig's cage, dashed to the window, and passed it out to Ron. He was scrambling back onto the chest of drawers when Uncle Vernon hammered on the unlocked door — and it crashed open.**

James swore again.

"Get in the car Dad," Albus muttered worriedly. He could not take one more second of the Dursleys.

**For a split second, Uncle Vernon stood framed in the doorway; then he let out a bellow like an angry bull and dived at Harry, grabbing him by the ankle.**

"Get your horrible hands off him," Teddy growled, the emotions he'd managed to keep suppressed for the sake of the younger kids breaking through.

**Ron, Fred, and George seized Harry's arms and pulled as hard as they could.**

"**Petunia!" roared Uncle Vernon. "He's getting away! HE'S GETTING AWAY!"**

Teddy bit his lip to stop himself from shouting. This man was sick. He didn't like Harry, that much was obvious, but was he really this desperate to keep him as a prisoner? Why did he want to keep a twelve-year-old locked up and half-starved so badly?

**But the Weasleys gave a gigantic tug and Harry's leg slid out of Uncle Vernon's grasp — Harry was in the car — he'd slammed the door shut —**

There was another round of enthusiastic cheering. Finally – finally – they were officially out of that house.

"**Put your foot down, Fred!" yelled Ron, and the car shot suddenly toward the moon.**

**Harry couldn't believe it — he was free. **

"You better believe it, Dad," James grinned.

"Yeah, not only that, but you're going to the Burrow!" Hugo chimed in happily. He loved his grandparents' house a lot and it was about time his uncle got to be someplace nice.

**He rolled down the window, the night air whipping his hair, and looked back at the shrinking rooftops of Privet Drive. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia,**

**and Dudley were all hanging, dumbstruck, out of Harry's window.**

"**See you next summer!" Harry yelled.**

There was quite a bit of snickering, which Teddy joined in with, though he was wishing Harry didn't have to go back there at all. He wondered for the first time where his father was in all of this. He understood why Harry couldn't have stayed with his dad – being a werewolf made single-parenting a bit tricky – but why couldn't he have at least dropped by once in a while to make sure his best friends' son was at least okay? Harry did way more for his kid after all.

A moment after thinking it, Teddy felt awful. He hadn't had bitter thoughts like that since he was a confused teenager. He _really _needed to find Harry. He didn't know what exactly Harry could say that would fix it all, but he always seemed to find something before. Maybe he'd drop by the ministry during lunch.

**The Weasleys roared with laughter and Harry settled back in his seat, grinning from ear to ear.**

"**Let Hedwig out," he told Ron. "She can fly behind us. She hasn't had a chance to stretch her wings for ages."**

**George handed the hairpin to Ron and, a moment later, Hedwig soared joyfully out of the window to glide alongside them like a ghost.**

"Sweet! Dad can pick locks, too!" Hugo exclaimed. "Think he'd teach me?"

"Hue, if you want to learn, _I _can teach you," Lily sighed, rolling her eyes at her friend and smirking at Scorpius, who was the only one who seemed surprised by this fact.

"Does your family have a rule breaking requirement or something?" Scorpius asked Albus and Rose.

"Sort of," Rose said smirked.

Albus scooted around Rose so he could mutter in Scorpius's ear "You're gonna have to loosen up, Scorp, if you wanna _really _become part of the family." Albus winked in his cousin's direction and smothered his laughter at Scorpius's completely horrified and confused expression.

Scorpius refrained from smacking his friend only because he'd seen the way he looked during the last chapter and was glad Al was laughing again, even if it was at his expense.

"**So — what's the story, Harry?" said Ron impatiently. "What's been happening?"**

**Harry told them all about Dobby, the warning he'd given Harry and the fiasco of the violet pudding. There was a long, shocked silence when he had finished.**

"**Very fishy," said Fred finally.**

"**Definitely dodgy," agreed George. "So he wouldn't even tell you who's supposed to be plotting all this stuff?"**

"**I don't think he could," said Harry. "I told you, every time he got close to letting something slip, he started banging his head against the wall."**

**He saw Fred and George look at each other.**

"**What, you think he was lying to me?" said Harry.**

"Do you think he was?" Lily asked uncertainly.

"I… I'm not sure," Teddy said, because everybody was once again looking at him. "I sort of don't think so. I mean, we know something's bound to happen this year. We've all heard all the jokes about Harry never having a peaceful year at school, but I guess that could be something else…"

"If he was lying, then what does that mean?" Hugo asked, but James kept reading before anyone could answer him.

"**Well," said Fred, "put it this way — house-elves have got powerful magic of their own, but they can't usually use it without their master's permission. I reckon old Dobby was sent to stop you coming back to Hogwarts. Someone's idea of a joke. **

"That's not really funny," Fred said, frowning.

"If he was lying, it's not his fault then," Rose said. "He couldn't disobey his masters and we all know Dobby ends up doing something really good, so we shouldn't be mad at him."

She directed her look at Hugo in particular because she could tell he resented the elf for interfering with their parents' letters.

**Can you think of anyone at school with a grudge against you?"**

"Well," James said, putting the book down and looking thoughtful. "There's most of Slytherin house for stealing the cup right out from under them. And if it's none of them, there's always the ever-charming Potions Master, Snape, who doesn't seem to need a reason to hate Dad." He shot a wicked look at his little brother here and Rose glowered at him, but Albus didn't seem to notice anything.

"**Yes," said Harry and Ron together, instantly.**

"**Draco Malfoy," **

Scorpius stiffened at the mention of his father's name. No way, not even his dad would do that. They didn't even have a house-elf.

**Harry explained. "He hates me."**

"**Draco Malfoy?" said George, turning around. "Not Lucius Malfoy's son?"**

"Unfortunately," Scorpius mumbled, twisting the hem of his tee-shirt angrily between his fingers.

"**Must be, it's not a very common name, is it?" said Harry. "Why?"**

"**I've heard Dad talking about him," said George. "He was a big supporter of You-Know-Who."**

"**And when You-Know-Who disappeared," said Fred, craning around to look at Harry, "Lucius Malfoy came back saying he'd never meant any of it. Load of dung — Dad reckons he was right in You-Know-Who's inner circle."**

"Your grandpa was in You-Know-Who's inner circle?" Lily asked, turning wide eyes on her brother's friend.

"Erm…" Scorpius said, looking very uncomfortable and miserable.

"Looks like it," Albus said, looking stonily at, not his friend as Scorpius feared, but at his sister. "But you just saw what the people who raised Dad were like and he never locked us in a cupboard, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

Scorpius shot a grateful look at his friend as Lily looked away sheepishly.

Teddy was regarding Albus thoughtfully.

"You know who you sound like?" he asked, looking slightly amused. "You sound exactly like your dad and Dumbledore. At least the portrait-version of Dumbledore that I've talked to in McGonagall's office. Harry'd be really proud if he heard you now."

Albus looked down, blushing a little and Teddy looked even more amused than before.

**Harry had heard these rumors about Malfoy's family before, and they didn't surprise him at all. Malfoy made Dudley Dursley look like a kind, thoughtful, and sensitive boy.**

"Now Dad, don't you think that's taking it a bit far for both of them?" James said. "Wait, nope they both deserve that comparison."

"**I don't know whether the Malfoys own a house-elf. . . ." said Harry.**

"We don't," Scorpius said quietly, but firmly.

"**Well, whoever owns him will be an old wizarding family, and they'll be rich," said Fred.**

"**Yeah, Mum's always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing," **

"Bet Aunt Hermione never heard that, or she wouldn't have married Uncle Ron," Fred 'whispered'.

Hugo and Rose glared at him while the others carefully averted their eyes.

**said George. "But all we've got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors and castles and places like that; you wouldn't catch one in our house. . . ."**

**Harry was silent. Judging by the fact that Draco Malfoy usually had the best of everything, his family was rolling in wizard gold; he could just see Malfoy strutting around a large manor house. Sending the family servant to stop Harry from going back to Hogwarts also sounded exactly like the sort of thing Malfoy would do. **

Scorpius frowned. He didn't like to admit it, but from the last book, he could see his father doing something like that too.

**Had Harry been stupid to take Dobby seriously?**

"**I'm glad we came to get you, anyway," said Ron. **

"We all are," Fred said, for once completely serious.

"**I was getting really worried when you didn't answer any of my letters. I thought it was Errol's fault at first —"**

"Errol!" everyone but Scorpius chorused, beaming. None of them had actually met the incredibly old owl, but he'd been made a legend among the grandchildren by Ron and his brothers. Ever since Ron had rocked Teddy to sleep with a story about Errol's great adventures the owl had become a favorite bed-time story hero.

"**Who's Errol?"**

"Only the greatest owl ever!" James exclaimed enthusiastically.

"**Our owl. He's ancient. It wouldn't be the first time he'd collapsed on a delivery. So then I tried to borrow Hermes —"**

"_**Who**_**?"**

"Errol's annoying rival who sometimes turns evil," Fred explained as if it should have been obvious.

"**The owl Mum and Dad bought Percy when he was made prefect,"**

"That makes so much sense, now!" Fred said in a voice of dawning comprehension. "If Uncle Percy was anything like Molly…"

**said Fred from the front.**

"**But Percy wouldn't lend him to me," said Ron. "Said he needed him."**

"**Percy's been acting very oddly this summer," said George, frowning. "And he **_**has **_**been sending a lot of letters and spending a load of time shut up in his room. . . . I mean, there's only so many times you can polish a prefect badge. . . .**

"Bet he's got a girlfriend!" James sang.

"Aunt Audrey?" Lily asked.

"Nah, they didn't meet 'til after the war," Teddy informed them.

"Who then?" Hugo wondered.

"Maybe it's not a girlfriend at all," Rose suggested.

"Five sickles says it is," James said, eager to get some more betting done.

Rose looked at him appraisingly. "I'll take that bet," she said after a second.

They shook and Teddy was told to record this very official deal.

**You're driving too far west, Fred," he added, pointing at a compass on the dashboard.**

**Fred twiddled the steering wheel.**

"**So, does your dad know you've got the car?" said Harry, guessing the answer.**

"Course he does," Fred said seriously. "Grandpa just handed the keys of his probably-illegal flying car to his fourteen-year-old, notoriously rule-breaking sons and told them to go have a spin around England."

"**Er, no," said Ron, "he had to work tonight. Hopefully we'll be able to get it back in the garage without Mum noticing we flew it."**

Every single person who had grown up with Molly Weasley (the first) burst into hysterical laughter at these words.

"Who wants to bet we get treated to a famous Grandma-Molly lecture?" Fred asked.

Nobody bet against him.

"**What does your dad do at the Ministry of Magic, anyway?"**

"**He works in the most boring department," said Ron. "The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."**

"Grandpa's department's cool," Hugo protested.

"I think only you and Grandpa think that," James told him.

"**The **_**what**_**?"**

"Jeez, I forgot how clueless Dad used to be," said James.

"**It's all to do with bewitching things that are Muggle-made, you know, in case they end up back in a Muggle shop or house. Like, last year, some old witch died and her tea set was sold to an antiques shop. This Muggle woman bought it, took it home, and tried to serve her friends tea in it. It was a nightmare — Dad was working overtime for weeks."**

"**What happened?"**

"**The teapot went berserk and squirted boiling tea all over the place and one man ended up in the hospital with the sugar tongs clamped to his nose. **

"And you all say it's a boring department," Hugo huffed, crossing his arms.

**Dad was going frantic — it's only him and an old warlock called Perkins in the office — and they had to do Memory Charms and all sorts of stuff to cover it up —"**

"**But your dad — this car —"**

Everyone but Scorpius, who hadn't known Mr. Weasley very long, shared amused smiles.

**Fred laughed. "Yeah, Dad's crazy about everything to do with Muggles; **

"Just like our little Hue," Fred said, ruffling Hugo's hair over-enthusiastically. "He'll be the next recruit to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office."

"So what if I am," Hugo muttered, ducking out of Fred's reach and attempting to fix his hair.

**our shed's full of Muggle stuff. He takes it apart, puts spells on it, and puts it back together again. If he raided **_**our **_**house he'd have to put himself under arrest. It drives Mum mad."**

"Looks like some things don't change very much," Rose smiled.

"**That's the main road," said George, peering down through the windshield. "We'll be there in ten minutes. . . . Just as well, it's getting light. . . ."**

**A faint pinkish glow was visible along the horizon to the east. Fred brought the car lower, and Harry saw a dark patchwork of fields and clumps of trees.**

"They're getting close!" Lily said, starting to bounce excitedly like she always did whenever they drove anywhere.

"Isn't it a bit weird to think that those fields and stuff aren't very far from where we _right now_?" Fred commented.

"**We're a little way outside the village," said George. "Ottery St. Catchpole."**

**Lower and lower went the flying car. The edge of a brilliant red sun was now gleaming through the trees.**

"**Touchdown!" said Fred as, with a slight bump, they hit the ground. They had landed next to a tumbledown garage in a small yard, and Harry looked out for the first time at Ron's house.**

Lily actually squealed with excitement at the familiar descriptions. It was much easier to imagine this story was not just some piece of fiction when she recognized exactly what was being described.

**It looked as though it had once been a large stone pigpen, but extra rooms had been added here and there until it was several stories high and so crooked it looked as though it were held up by magic (which, Harry reminded himself, it probably was). Four or five chimneys were perched on top of the red roof. A lopsided sign stuck in the ground near the entrance read, the burrow. Around the front door lay a jumble of rubber boots and a very rusty cauldron. Several fat brown chickens were pecking their way around the yard.**

Everyone grinned at each other excitedly. It was a perfect description of the building they now sat in; nearly everyone's favorite place in the world.

"**It's not much," said Ron.**

"Of course it is, Dad!" Hugo said indignantly. "It's wonderful!"

"**It's **_**wonderful,**_**" said Harry happily, thinking of Privet Drive.**

"There you go. Harry agrees with me," Hugo said smugly.

Scorpius smiled He'd thought much the same thing when he'd first clapped eyes on the Burrow. It was nothing like the sprawling, elaborate manner he'd grown up in, but there was something warm and inviting about it that he'd liked right away. It was a lot like the Weasleys themselves.

**They got out of the car.**

"**Now, we'll go upstairs really quietly," said Fred, "and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast. Then, Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, 'Mum, look who turned up in the night!' and she'll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car."**

"Is that really their plan?" Fred asked incredulously.

"Disappointing," James agreed, shaking his head.

"**Right," said Ron. "Come on, Harry, I sleep at the — at the top —"**

**Ron had gone a nasty greenish color, his eyes fixed on the house. **

"Busted," Fred whispered, but his voice carried around the bedroom easily.

**The other three wheeled around.**

**Mrs. Weasley was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger.**

"See! I'm not the only one who sees it!" James exclaimed, pointing at the book and looking around at them all pointedly.

"_**Ah,**_**" said Fred.**

"**Oh, dear," said George.**

**Mrs. Weasley came to a halt in front of them, her hands on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next. She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of the pocket.**

"_**So,**_**" she said.**

" '**Morning, Mum," said George, in what he clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.**

"Like father, like son," James sighed, shaking his head. "It never works," he stage whispered to Scorpius, the only one who had not seen this technique crash and burn on multiple occasions.

"**Have you any idea how worried I've been?" said Mrs. Weasley in a deadly whisper.**

"**Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to —"**

"Rescue the savior of the Wizarding world a.k.a. your seventh son from being imprisoned in his own house," Fred finished, surprisingly somewhat seriously.

**All three of Mrs. Weasley's sons were taller than she was, but they cowered as her rage broke over them.**

"Any sane man would," James said solemnly.

Scorpius was trying to picture his friends' kindly grandmother being this scary.

"_**Beds empty**_**! **_**No note**_**! **_**Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care**_**? **_**— never, as long as I've lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —**_**"**

"**Perfect Percy," muttered Fred.**

"**YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in Fred's chest. "You could have **_**died, **_**you could have been **_**seen, **_**you could have lost your father his **_**job **_**—"**

**It seemed to go on for hours. Mrs. Weasley had shouted herself hoarse before she turned on Harry, who backed away.**

"Don't worry, Dad, you're her favorite," James laughed. It was an old joke among the whole family.

"**I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, dear," she said. "Come in and have some breakfast."**

"Yeah, after that warm welcoming scene, who wouldn't want to come on in?" Fred laughed.

**She turned and walked back into the house and Harry, after a nervous glance at Ron, who nodded encouragingly, followed her.**

**The kitchen was small and rather cramped. **

They all smiled nostalgically at this simple description of one of their favorite rooms in the house. (All except Scorpius who had only been in the room a handful of times)

**There was a scrubbed wooden table and chairs in the middle, and Harry sat**

**down on the edge of his seat, looking around. He had never been in a wizard house before.**

"Then this is a great first impression," Hugo beamed.

"Weird that he doesn't remember ever being in a wizard house," James mumbled, thinking of the destroyed cottage he had once seen on the other side of Godric's Hollow.

**The clock on the wall opposite him had only one hand and no numbers at all. Written around the edge were things like **_**Time to make tea, Time to feed the chickens, **_**and **_**You're late. **_**Books were stacked three deep on the mantelpiece, books with titles like **_**Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, **_**and **_**One Minute Feasts — It's Magic**_**! And unless Harry's ears were deceiving him, the old radio next to the sink had just announced that coming up was "Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck."**

They all (except Scorpius again, who was beginning to feel slightly left out) exchanged nostalgic and slightly exasperated smiles. Their Grandmother and Celestina Warbeck. But the familiar details made them all grin widely.

**Mrs. Weasley was clattering around, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, throwing dirty looks at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she muttered things like "don't know **_**what **_**you were thinking of," and "**_**never **_**would have believed it."**

"**I don't blame **_**you, **_**dear," she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. **

Albus smiled a bit, glad that his grandmother was being her usual self. If anybody was in need of mothering, he bet it was his dad. At least he was in need of a good grandma-Molly breakfast. Speaking of which, he thought he could smell sausages cooking all the way down in the kitchen from there.

"**Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we'd come and get you ourselves if you hadn't written back to Ron by Friday. **

"I almost wish that's what had happened," Teddy said suddenly. "There's no way your grandparents would have taken that if they'd seen it. But I doubt they'll really take what Ron and the twins say seriously and Harry probably won't bring it up at all."

**But really" (she was now adding three fried eggs to his plate), **

Most people's mouths had begun to water by now.

"**flying an illegal car halfway across the country — anyone could have seen you —"**

**She flicked her wand casually at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves, clinking gently in the background.**

"**It was **_**cloudy, **_**Mum!" said Fred.**

"**You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" Mrs. Weasley snapped.**

"**They were starving him, Mum!" said George.**

"**And you!" said Mrs. Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started cutting Harry bread and buttering it for him.**

Teddy groaned a little. "See? She just thinks they're exaggerating. I can't _believe _they got away with that!"

To his horror, he felt his eyes begin to burn and his throat constrict. He looked down and blinked furiously. Maybe he'd go to the ministry at breakfast instead of lunch.

**At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, redheaded**

**figure in a long nightdress, who appeared in the kitchen, gave a small squeal, and ran out again.**

"Was that…?" Albus asked, straightening up.

"Mum?" James finished, sniggering. "Unless Uncle Percy's girlfriend's trying to sneak out without being noticed, or Uncle Percy is modeling nightdresses, I'm pretty sure that was Mum."

"**Ginny," said Ron in an undertone to Harry. "My sister. She's been talking about you all summer."**

There was quite a bit of giggling after this statement.

"**Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry," Fred said with a grin, **

Lily, James, Albus, and even Teddy burst out laughing.

"I can't believe Mum was a fan girl!" James choked.

**but he caught his mother's eye and bent his face over his plate without another word. Nothing more was said until all four plates were clean, which took a surprisingly short time.**

"_**Blimey, **_**I'm tired," yawned Fred, setting down his knife and fork at last. "I think I'll go to bed and —"**

"**You will not," snapped Mrs. Weasley. **

"Nice try," Fred said sympathetically.

"**It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again —"**

"**Oh, Mum —"**

"**And you two," she said, glaring at Ron and George. "You can go up to bed, dear," she added to Harry. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car —"**

There was some more snickering at this, and Albus was grinning. This was how things were supposed to go. His uncles had snuck out, stolen the car, and flown it halfway across the country to smuggle their friend home, and they just had to de-gnome the garden. He was glad his father (at least the kid in the book) got to see that you were not supposed to lock your children up as punishment.

**But Harry, who felt wide awake, said quickly, "I'll help Ron. I've never seen a de-gnoming —"**

" 'course he did. That's why Grandma likes him so much. He never wriggles out of chores," James sighed.

"**That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work," said Mrs. Weasley. **

"Not the way we do it!" James grinned, looking at Fred.

"You are the only people I have ever met who could possibly turn a chore like that into a potentially deadly sport." Albus said, to which Fred and James grinned proudly and pretended to blush.

"**Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject —"**

**And she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. George groaned.**

"**Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden —"**

**Harry looked at the cover of Mrs. Weasley's book. Written across it in fancy gold letters were the words **_**Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests. **_

"Who is this Lockhart guy?" Rose asked, frowning suddenly. "I've never heard of him."

To everyone's surprise, Teddy snickered. "I found some of his books in Hermione's study once," he explained. "He erm… he's full of it. Ron doesn't reckon he could tell a gnome from a banshee. 'Course he was snickering the whole time like they do when they've got one of their inside jokes, so I'm not sure what _that_ meant."

"How come Grandma's got a book about him if he's a fraud?" Rose asked.

Teddy shrugged. "Must not have come out yet that he didn't know anything."

**There was a big photograph on the front of a very good-looking wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. **

Fred and James began to snicker. "That's why Grandma had the book," James told her.

Rose stuck her tongue out at him.

**As always in the wizarding world, the photograph was moving; the wizard, who Harry supposed was Gilderoy Lockhart, kept winking cheekily up at them all. Mrs. Weasley beamed down at him.**

"**Oh, he is marvelous," she said. "He knows his household pests, all right, it's a wonderful book. . . ."**

"**Mum **_**fancies **_**him," said Fred, in a very audible whisper.**

"**Don't be so ridiculous, Fred," said Mrs. Weasley, her cheeks rather pink. **

"Told you so," James shot at Rose cheekily.

"**All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it."**

**Yawning and grumbling, the Weasleys slouched outside with Harry behind them. The garden was large, and in Harry's eyes, exactly what a garden should be. The Dursleys wouldn't have liked it**

"That's one of the best compliments a garden can get," Fred beamed.

— **there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting — but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, plants Harry had never seen spilling from every flower bed, and a big green pond full of frogs.**

"**Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn.**

"Do they?" Scorpius said in surprise.

"**Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods. . . ."**

Most of the boys were snickering at the confused look on Scorpius's face.

"Yeah, none of us can figure it out either," Albus told him consolingly.

**There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. "**_**This **_**is a gnome," he said grimly.**

"**Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" squealed the gnome.**

**It was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. Ron held it at arm's length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down.**

"**This is what you have to do," he said. He raised the gnome above his head ("Gerroff me!") and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry's face, Ron added, "It doesn't **_**hurt **_**them — you've just got to make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnomeholes."**

"Except that no matter how much you swing them, they _always _do," James complained.

"You would know, Jamie!" Lily giggled.

"So would you, Albus reminded her.

The previous summer James had tested this by spinning around with a gnome for an hour straight and Lily, bored, had imitated him. The gnomes were back by the next morning.

**He let go of the gnome's ankles: It flew twenty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge.**

"**Pitiful," said Fred. "I bet I can get mine beyond that stump."**

"Why can't you two de-gnome like that?" Albus demanded.

"Ah, my dear baby brother, but that would be boring," James said, flashing an innocent smile at Albus who was scowling at being called 'baby brother'.

"Yeah, because there's no chance of someone getting decapitated," Albus muttered under his breath.

**Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge, **

"Big mistake," Fred cautioned ineffectually.

**but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry's**

**finger **

"Told you so!" Fred sang.

**and he had a hard job shaking it off — until —**

"**Wow, Harry — that must've been fifty feet. . . ."**

**The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.**

"**See, they're not too bright," said George, seizing five or six gnomes at once. "The moment they know the de-gnoming's going on, they storm up to have a look. You'd think they'd have learned by now just to stay put."**

**Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.**

"**They'll be back," said Ron as they watched the gnomes disappear into the hedge on the other side of the field. "They love it here. . . . Dad's too soft with them; he thinks they're funny. . . ."**

**Just then, the front door slammed.**

"**He's back!" said George. "Dad's home!"**

**They hurried through the garden and back into the house. Mr. Weasley was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his eyes closed. He was a thin man, going bald, but the little hair he had was as red as any of his children's. He was wearing long green robes, which were dusty and travel-worn.**

"**What a night," he mumbled, groping for the teapot as they all sat down around him. "Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned. . . ."**

"Dung? Like that little fat guy who comes to Order Memorials and stuff?" James wondered. "The one who avoids Dad at all costs?"

Teddy chuckled a bit humorously. He had once asked Harry about why Mondungus avoided him. "Yeah, that sounds like Dung."

**Mr. Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed.**

"**Find anything, Dad?" said Fred eagerly.**

"**All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle," yawned Mr. Weasley. "There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that's the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness. . . ."**

"**Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?" said George.**

"**Just Muggle-baiting," sighed Mr. Weasley. "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it. . . . Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking — they'll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face. . . . But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe —"**

"**LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?"**

"Busted!" Fred sang again.

**Mrs. Weasley had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Mr. Weasley's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife.**

Most people were smirking at the familiar expression.

"**C-cars, Molly, dear?"**

"**Yes, Arthur, cars," said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while **_**really **_**he was enchanting it to make it **_**fly.**_**"**

Everyone had started to chortle by this point.

**Mr. Weasley blinked.**

"**Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if — er — he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth. . . . **

The chortling became outright laughter here.

**There's a loophole in the law, you'll find. . . . As long as he wasn't **_**intending **_**to fly the car, the fact that the car **_**could **_**fly wouldn't —"**

"**Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"**

"**Harry?" said Mr. Weasley blankly. "Harry who?"**

Those who had been laughing were now howling.

**He looked around, saw Harry, and jumped.**

"**Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about —"**

"_**Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night**_**!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"**

"**Did you really?" said Mr. Weasley eagerly. "Did it go all right?**

"Classic Granddad," James grinned through his laughter.

**I — I mean," he faltered as sparks flew from Mrs. Weasley's eyes, "that — that was very wrong, boys — very wrong indeed. . . ."**

"Very convincing," Fred smirked.

"**Let's leave them to it," Ron muttered to Harry as Mrs. Weasley swelled like a bullfrog. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."**

**They slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. On the third landing, a door stood ajar. Harry just caught sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring at him before it closed with a snap.**

"**Ginny," said Ron. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally —"**

"Just like Lily," James muttered. Lily threw a pillow at him.

"It's weird for Mum to be shy though," she said, ignoring James retaliatory scowl.

"Can't wait to see what you're like around your first crush," Albus teased.

**They climbed two more flights until they reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying Ronald's room.**

They all exchanged looks. It was very weird to read about the very place they were sitting right now. Albus half-expected his twelve-year-old father and uncle to come bursting through the door exactly like they had done more than twenty years ago.

**Harry stepped in, his head almost touching the sloping ceiling,**

"Almost?" Fred said standing up to get a measure of how tall that was. He had to stoop to avoid banging his head on the ceiling in front of the door. "Jeez Uncle Harry was short. Like Albus short."

"You've seen pictures of Dad at Albus's age. They're like identical. It's freaky. I half expect the ministry to pull Dad in for an inquiry about cloning magic."

"I'm not that short," Albus protested, carefully not standing up, which would probably prove their point. "And me and Dad don't look _exactly _the same."

He only got blank stares.

"Okay, so we do. But we're not _that _short!"

**and blinked. It was like walking into a furnace: Nearly everything in Ron's room seemed to be a violent shade of orange: the bedspread, the walls, even the ceiling. Then Harry realized that Ron had covered nearly every inch of the shabby wallpaper with posters of the same seven witches and wizards, all wearing bright orange robes, carrying broomsticks, and waving energetically.**

"**Your Quidditch team?" said Harry.**

"**The Chudley Cannons," said Ron, pointing at the orange bedspread, which was emblazoned with two giant black C's and a speeding cannonball. "Ninth in the league."**

**Ron's school spellbooks were stacked untidily in a corner, next to a pile of comics that all seemed to feature **_**The Adventures of MartinMiggs, the Mad Muggle. **_**Ron's magic wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill, next to his fat gray rat, Scabbers, who was snoozing in a patch of sun.**

Everyone except James, who was reading, stared around at the room as James read the description. It was eerily accurate. Except for Scabbers and the wand, nothing had changed. Ron had even kept a frog living in the tank on the window sill.

"This is way weird," Hugo breathed. "But in a cool way. It's kind of like we're in a book. Except it's not us. It's dad and Harry twenty-five years ago, standing exactly where we are right now."

**Harry stepped over a pack of Self-Shuffling playing cards on the floor and looked out of the tiny window. In the field far below he could see a gang of gnomes sneaking one by one back through the Weasleys' hedge. Then he turned to look at Ron, who was watching him almost nervously, as though waiting for his opinion.**

"**It's a bit small," said Ron quickly. "Not like that room you had with the Muggles. **

"Yeah, the biggest difference is the lack of bared windows," Albus said darkly, but so quietly that only Rose and Scorpius heard him.

**And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic; he's always banging on the pipes and groaning. . . ."**

**But Harry, grinning widely, said, "This is the best house I've ever been in."**

" 'course it is! It's Dad's!" Hugo grinned.

**Ron's ears went pink.**

With that James shut the book. They all sat there, staring at each other for a second, before the delicious sent of breakfast, faint after traveling all the way up to the attic, but still over-whelming enticing, attracted their attention.

James and Fred leapt up, nearly smacking their heads on the low ceiling, and made a wild dash for the door with Hugo hot on their heels. Lily took a running leap and scrambled on James's back, nearly knocking him down the stairs. Albus, Rose, and Scorpius fallowed more slowly. Rose and Scorpius were keeping a cautious eye on Albus.

"Coming, Teddy?" Albus asked, pausing at the door because Teddy hadn't moved.

"Yeah…. Maybe," Teddy answered, forcing a smile for the younger ones. "I might have to go do something quick though. If I miss breakfast make sure you guys wait for me to keep reading, kay?"

"Sure," Albus promised, and the three of them disappeared after the others down the stairs.

Teddy flopped back onto the mess of blankets and pressed his hands over his face. Should he go now? He wanted to, but he had no idea how to bring this up without letting slip about the books. Would Harry even be there? If he waited for lunch at least there was a good chance Harry would have time to talk to him. But could he wait that long? What else might they read between now and lunch?

Teddy didn't know what to do.


	4. Sinking In

**Chapter 4-Sinking In**

Teddy stood immobile as the crowd surged around him, staring at the office door in more trepidation than he ever had before. He had to do this. He didn't think he could take reading another page of that book until he had. Steeling himself, he raised a fist and knocked, something he had never done on this particular office door.

"Come in," came the muffled response from the other side, and Teddy pushed the door open.

Harry had his head buried in a filing cabinet, papers flung about the room as if a mini tornado had flown through.

"Looking for something?" Teddy asked bemusedly as Harry tossed another file over his shoulder, sending a cascade of parchment to the floor.

"Hey Ted," Harry said in surprise, glancing at him over his shoulder. "Since when do you knock?"

"Well, when I spotted people fleeing your office door shrieking about rampaging nifflers, I thought it might be a good idea," Teddy quipped, perching on the edge of Harry's desk.

"Suppose it does sound like that, huh?" Harry grinned, wrenching open yet another draw and proceeding to tear it apart too.

"Erm… why is it exactly that you're tearing your office to shreds?" Teddy inquired.

"Looking for something Hermione gave me a few months ago which has apparently disappeared," Harry shrugged.

"And the conventional way of searching for it didn't work because…?"

"I spent all morning trying the conventional way. My filling system deserved to be destroyed for being so difficult." With one final impatient sigh, Harry slammed the last drawer shut and turned to face his smirking godson. "So what brings you into the office today? Missing training already?"

Teddy snorted. "Fun as it is to have Thomas attempting to hex me from around every corner, I think I'll make through the rest of the break."

"So what's going on then? The boys haven't managed to burn down The Burrow have they?"

"No, not yet. Actually, they've been getting on better than usual lately. I think I've only had to stop them from strangling each other about twenty times."

Harry whistled. "Impressive."

"I…" Teddy kept his eyes fixed carefully on his hands, mouth going dry. He felt like he was a little kid again, asking something he knew he really shouldn't. "I need to talk to you about something."

"What's the matter?" Harry asked in concern, leaning against the desk beside Teddy and scrutinizing his godson.

Teddy took a breath. He knew he was taking a risk here and the others would hate him if he ruined everything, but there was no better way to do it. "What were the Dursleys like when you lived with them?"

He felt Harry stiffen beside him and could almost hear the mental shutters clanging shut.

"What makes you ask?" Harry said, his voice sounding light, but carrying metallic toughness to it.

"I heard Ron and George talking the other day," Teddy said carefully. It wasn't exactly a strong lie, but it would work for now. It was all he'd managed to come up with on the way to Harry's office. "Is it true they had to pull bars off your window when they came to get you?"

"Well… that makes it sound a lot more sinister than it actually was-" Harry hedged.

"They said you were locked in your room and fed through a cat-flap!" Teddy exclaimed in distressed frustration. Everything he'd been pushing away since he'd come back into the bedroom this morning was welling up again.

Harry silently cursed Ron and George. Teddy might be twenty years old, but they should know not to talk about things like that around him. He would have to have a word with them about it tonight.

"Teddy, you know how Ron and his brothers like to exaggerate everything," Harry said in a placating voice, but if anything that just seemed to make Teddy more upset then before.

He pushed himself off the desk and spun around to look Harry straight in the eye. He could not believe Harry was going to try to brush this off like it didn't matter.

"So what did happen then?" he demanded. "What's the not-so-sinister reason they put bars on your window?"

Teddy glared at him, crossing his arms stubbornly. After a minute of tense silence, Harry spoke. "Well, I got a letter from the Ministry saying I'd done under-aged magic and my aunt and uncle were, as you can imagine, not too pleased. They're afraid of magic so they went a little over-bored with the punishment. But it wasn't as if they were starving me or – or getting violent or anything. I just couldn't leave my room."

There was another silence during which Teddy gaped at him. This half-truth thing was going to make him implode if Harry kept it up much longer.

"You're lying," Teddy told Harry quietly. He didn't need the books to know that. "You won't look me in the eyes and your voice is unsteady. I'm training to be an Auror, Harry. We just covered this in Interrogations and Suspicious Behavior."

"I'm not lying to you, Teddy," Harry protested. It was true, but only barely.

"Yes you are!" Teddy exploded, throwing his arms into the air. "It's bad enough that you never told me about stuff like this before, but now you're _still_ trying to cover it up and act like nothing's happened! What they did –" he choked on the words and turned away. "I thought I knew what it was like for you better than anyone, but I had no idea all along, did I?"

He sank heavily into one of the chairs in front of Harry's desk and looked up at him with a mixture of reproach and desperation. Harry let out a gusty breath and rubbed his hands over his face. "Look, Ted," he said, straightening up and being very careful to look Teddy right in the eyes. "You're not a kid anymore, so I guess I can't just give you some candy and tell you everything's fine anymore, can I?"

"No, that probably won't work," Teddy agreed heavily.

"So no sugarcoating. My childhood sucked. My aunt and uncle didn't like magic and they didn't like me and they let me know it. I never told you all this stuff – never told anyone – because all I wanted to do was forget about it. It had nothing to do with trust or anything like that. It's done, it's in the past. There's nothing anybody can do about it and there's no point dwelling on it. Besides, it really isn't as bad as it all sounds. It seemed pretty horrible at the time, but it didn't last long and it wasn't as bad as some kids have it."

Teddy felt his throat closing again as he listened to Harry's explanation. Did he really think it wasn't that bad? "You do know they were out of line doing all that, right? You know you didn't deserve it or anything?"

"How do you know if I deserved it or not?" Harry shot back.

"Because no twelve-year-old kid deserves to be locked in their room and practically starved," Teddy said firmly, standing up and putting a hand on Harry's shoulder so that Harry would meet his eyes. "That's what they did to you. And that's a big deal. Maybe it's easier for you to pretend it's not, but it is and it's wrong and it wasn't your fault."

Harry nodded, smiling slightly. "When you did you get so grown-up?"

Teddy dropped his hand from Harry's shoulder and took his place next to him on the desk again. "Just wanted to make sure someone told you that," he mumbled.

"You're a good kid, Ted," Harry told him, slinging an arm around his godson's shoulders, even though Teddy was a good few inches taller than Harry.

"Can – can I ask you something?" Teddy asked, the nervousness from before returning as the roles of adult and kid switched back to normal.

"I suppose of we're laying it all out, one more can't hurt," Harry said.

"What exactly did they do to you? I mean, people don't just start locking kids up out of nowhere, do they? They didn't-" he licked his lips, half-afraid to even ask the question. "They didn't… you know.. hit you, did they? Even once?"

Harry squeezed Teddy's shoulders reassuringly. "No, they didn't lay a finger on me. Dudley and his gang used to take great pleasure in chasing me down and smacking me around, but that's not the same thing as what you're asking and I was a lot faster than they were, so it wasn't too often that they caught me."

Teddy sagged a little, more relieved than he thought he would be. "I just don't get it. How can you have grown up like that and just go on being so… normal?" he asked miserably. To Teddy's surprise, Harry gave a small chuckle.

"If I recall, last time I checked, you didn't think I was so normal."

"Yeah, well, I'm not talking about being obsessed with those muggle films, what are they called? Star Wars? Never mind. I'm talking about how you can get up and go to work and deal with your kids and your wife and with me the way you do. You act like nothing ever happened."

"You ever heard the saying 'life goes on'?" Harry asked. Teddy shrugged. "Well, that's the simple truth. You can either go with it or get stuck in the past. If I let myself dwell on all the horrible things people have done to me, I'd be an angry, bitter, vengeful old man and they would win. In spite of all the crap they threw my way, none of it stuck and now I'm free and I have all this, and none of what they did matters. I win. Make sense?"

"Yeah, I guess it does," Teddy said. He still wished none of it had to happen in the first place, was still sickened by the sick things the Dursleys had gotten away with, but Harry was right, like he usually was.

"You eaten anything?" Harry asked, glancing at his watch. Teddy shook his head. "Why don't I take my lunch early and we go find some breakfast?"

Xxx xxx xxx

"Albus, dear, are you alright?" Mrs. Weasley asked solicitously, peering at her second youngest grandson. "You've hardly touched your breakfast."

"I'm fine," he mumbled, scooping up a forkful of scrambled eggs and shoving it in his mouth.

Mrs. Weasley ran a hand through his messy raven hair and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, shaking her head in exasperation. _Just _like his father. When were they going to learn that after eight children – practically nine – and twelve – practically thirteen – grandchildren, there was no fooling her?

Once his grandmother had turned away, Albus dropped his fork and resumed pushing his breakfast around his plate with his toast. He wasn't very hungry. The whole kitchen reminded him of the chapter he'd just read and Albus was perfectly aware (because everyone who ever met him told him so) that he looked just like his father must have done eating this exact same breakfast twenty-five years ago. Except Harry really _had _been starving.

The others chattered away in the usual early-morning babble. Lucy sat as far away from her sister as possible, chatting with Dominique and Louis. Roxanne, who usually stuck close to Dominique and Lucy, had strategically placed herself at the other end of the table, between her brother and Molly to run interference if necessary. Lily was babbling away to Scorpius, who had unwittingly chosen the seat between her and Albus. Rose kept shooting smirks at him from Albus's other side, where she was enjoying a peaceful meal talking to Victoire about her job search. On Lily's other side, Hugo was staring around the room like he'd never seen it before, noticing the little details he'd read in the book and also noticing which little details had changed. Lily had to keep nudging him to make him stop him gaping. Fred and James, were of course, being their loud and rambunctious selves.

When Mrs. Weasley tuned the wireless to play "witching hour with the old favorite, Celestina Warbeck" Albus shot to his feet so fast, everyone turned to look at him. Leaving his nearly-full plate, he darted quickly out the back door.

"Come on," Rose said to Scorpius, jumping to her feet and dragging him out the back door by the elbow.

The others around the table exchanged looks. Mrs. Weasley smiled to herself, remembering another trio who had preformed nearly this exact charade on more than one occasion.

Rose and Scorpius found Albus sprawled on the grass beside the garden pond, watching the frogs hopping around it. They dropped down on either side of him and Rose scrutinized him openly while Scopius snuck surreptitious glances at his friend.

"You want to talk about it?" Rose asked.

"Not particularly," Albus answered dully.

"Where do you think Teddy's got off to?" Rose wondered.

The boys just shrugged.

"You think it's weird he's like my cousin and this is the first time I've ever met him?" Scorpius asked, running his hands through the cool grass.

"It's a bit weird, but not in a bad way really," Rose commented carefully. "I only mean that we've grown up so close to our family that it's hard to imagine having them out there and not knowing them. But now you've got the chance."

"What if he doesn't want to get to know me?" Scorpius asked. Admittedly he'd been worrying about this since he'd first met Teddy, but he pretended not to be, even to himself.

"Why wouldn't he want to?" Albus asked. "Teddy's a good bloke, you're a good bloke, what's stopping the two of you from chatting?"

Scorpius dug his fingers into the squishy mud beside the pond. "It's… I don't know, family history I guess. His grandmother raised him and she ran away from home and my grandmother never really did anything about it. I dunno."

"Look mate," Albus said, rolling over and looking up at Scorpius. "I've known Teddy my whole entire life. He's practically my brother. He's a good guy, plus he's been listening to my dad go on about tolerance and not judging people because of who they're related to for almost twice as long as I have. He'll give you a fair chance if you want one."

"Would my parents though?" Scorpius murmured so softly Rose and Albus barely heard.

"You think your dad would be mad if you hung out with Teddy?" Albus said in confusion.

"The Burrow is about as deep as you can get into enemy territory," Rose pointed out.

"I don't think he'd be really mad. He doesn't really let on much about how he feels anyways, but it's different with Teddy than it is with you guys. I – after reading about his first year and the way he used to act, well I still don't know why, but I think he sort of feels bad about it all now. Like letting me be friends with you guys is maybe a way to reconcile without really having to reconcile. But Teddy… that hits a little closer to home. And… well, he's… talked about him…"

"What's he said?" Albus asked, an edge of heat in his voice as he pushed himself up.

Scorpius went pink and stared fixedly at the muddy pond. "I dunno. I didn't really understand them and I didn't pay attention at the time. I didn't really remember until I started hearing you lot talking about him all the time. But I get the feeling it wasn't very nice. He called him a little mutant."

Albus hissed angrily and he and Rose exchanged furious looks.

"If I told Dad, he and Ron and probably Hermione would go stick him a new one," Albus spat.

Scorpius wanted to ask what it meant, but he was afraid to say anything with Al looking so mad. It was hard to get Al mad. Instead he just flopped back on the grass miserably. Albus and Rose imitated him and the three of them stared dazedly up at the wispy clouds curling and drifting in the serene blue sky.

"I bet he went to go talk to Dad," Albus said after a few minutes of silence. "Teddy, I mean. I bet he went to talk to Dad."

"What makes you think that?" Rose asked.

Albus shrugged, even though the other two couldn't see. "It's what Teddy does. Always has. You saw him after we read… you know, the part about the bars..." his voice trailed off miserably.

"I can't believe anybody could be that horrible," Rose said angrily. "I feel awful for your dad. He was just a kid and they took away his wand and everything. He was completely helpless."

"He'd hate to have your pity," Albus told her.

"I know, but I can't help it. I can't believe they got away with it, too!" Rose pounded the ground in frustration.

"It is pretty disturbing," Scorpius mumbled.

Albus rolled over on the grass and buried his face in his arms. It hit him hard, the idea of what those _people _had done. Albus, like his brother and sister, thought of his father as something of a hero. Not The-Boy-Who-Lived sort of hero or the head Auror sort, although he did think that was pretty cool.

Albus thought his dad was something of a hero because even when work was absolute rubbish and the three of them were driving their mother up the wall, he managed to find a smile for them all. Because heroes were the kind of people who stayed up all night with you when you had dragon pox even though they had to work the next day and always took the time to deal with your fears, no matter how stupid they were. Heroes were the people who always knew what to say when their mum started crying or took in their parents' friend's son like one of their own when he didn't have his parents around.

He supposed it was kind of wimpy to think things like that were heroic in a way, but he did. And no one could tell him now that those were things every parent did. It made Albus feel immensely ungrateful. All this time it turned out his father had grown up with people who starved him and locked him away. Albus had met his great uncle only once in his life and the description of that man in the book really scared him. He'd been terrified of what that man might do if he was angry enough. Harry might only have to be around the Dursleys in the summer, but there were still five more of those to go and Albus was more than a little afraid of what he might find out happened during those summers. If those people were awful enough to imprison their nephew, what else were they capable of?

"Albie?" Rose's soft voice using his toddler nickname cut through his thoughts. He felt her hand on his back. "Al, you're shaking."

He didn't respond. Somehow his cheeks had gotten wet and he didn't trust his voice to sound normal… or even work at all. The warm June morning felt too cold.

"Al, are you okay? Should we get someone?" Scorpius said nervously. Albus felt his hand, too, resting on his shoulder.

Albus shook his head, swallowing hard and berating himself for acting like such a baby. He lifted his head just enough to rub unobtrusively at his eyes and nose.

"I'm fine," he said roughly.

"It's about your dad, isn't it Al?" Rose said gently.

"Well spotted, Rose," Albus heard Scorpius mutter out of the side of his mouth. He could almost feel the glare she shot at him over Albus's head, but when she went on, her voice was still soft.

"It's horrible what they did, but I'm sure Mum and Dad and Grandma and Granddad won't let anything happen to him after this. You know he'll be fine."

Albus rolled back over so he was looking up at his two friends, not caring that much really if they saw the tearstains on his cheeks. It wasn't like Rose had never seen him cry before. Just not since he was about seven.

"I know he _will _be okay. I'm worried about what has _already _happened to him," Albus said heavily. He wasn't sure the other two really understood what he was trying to say because he'd garbled the message up a bit, but neither of them asked or looked confused. "You think we can just wait out here until Teddy gets back?"

The other two didn't answer. They just lay back down on either side of him and the three of them watched the clouds and listened to the frogs and felt the breeze play over their faces in comforting silence.


	5. At Flourish and Blots

**Chapter 5-At Flourish and Blots**

It took ages for Teddy to get back. Hugo had singed his eyebrows playing exploding snap with Lily, Fred and James had already managed to get Dominique furious by pretending to fall off their brooms, and Victoire was long gone, off to another interview with Percy (this time in _The Profit_ office) by the time Teddy came strolling through the gate. He looked a lot happier than he had last time they'd seen him.

Lily and Hugo came pelting towards him, shouting his name at the top of their lungs like they used to when they came to meet him at King's Cross.

"It's been _forever _Teddy!" Lily complained, dragging him by the hand towards the house.

Teddy smiled bemusedly at her, winking at Hugo. "Vic take off already?" he asked casually.

"Ages ago," Lily informed him, dropping his hand and turning to face him, hands on her hips. "She was disappointed she didn't get to see you this morning," she told him disapprovingly. "You're lucky I'm so nice to you. I picked some flowers for you to give her when she comes back."

"Thanks Lils, I owe you one," Teddy said sincerely, hiding his grin.

"I think it's three by now," Lily told him, grabbing his hand and continuing to pull him towards the back door.

"Don't you think we should grab the others?" Teddy asked, glancing at the pond where Rose, Al and Scorpius were still sprawled, the boys brooding sticks into the muddy banks and Rose explaining something to them with a lot of gesticulations.

Lily heaved an impatient sigh. "I suppose. We'll get Fred and James, you can see what's up with Al. He ran out during breakfast for some reason. Come on Hue."

Teddy watched the two of them dash off in the direction of the Quidditch paddock, their Weasley-red heads practically glowing in the morning sunlight. Then he cut across the yard to the trio by the pond.

"What's up?" he asked, flopping down on the grass beside Scorpius.

"Nothing, really," said Albus, keeping his eyes fixed on a particularly fat frog swimming in the middle of the pond.

Teddy looked at him closely out of the corner of his eye. There was evidence of tears on his cheeks and his eyes looked slightly bloodshot. "You guys ready to get back to the book? Lily's getting impatient."

"Lily has the patients of an angry dragon," Albus muttered.

The three of them clambered to their feet and Teddy followed suit, catching Al's arm as he made to follow Rose towards the house.

"You… alright?" Teddy asked quietly. He wasn't exactly sure what to do. He doubted he'd be able to explain what Harry had said to him and he didn't think it would work so well coming from him instead of Harry anyway.

Al was usually the easy one. James and Lily were the drama-queens, letting their emotions fly like fireworks. Teddy had had plenty of practice dealing with them, but Al was the quiet one, the one that didn't get mad or upset.

"I'm fine," he told Teddy and slipped his arm free to head towards the back door where Rose and Scorpius stood waiting for him.

Teddy sighed. When Al did get upset over something he was next to impossible to pin down and talk to about it. He kept it all wrapped up inside and you could talk 'til you were blue in the face and still not be sure he'd heard a word of it. Rose was probably the best at getting through to him besides Harry. Teddy hoped, if what they'd read got to him to badly, Rose would be able to handle it. If she couldn't, he'd have to do something.

"JAMES! FRED! GET DOWN HERE! TEDDY'S BACK!" Lily screamed at the top of her lungs, making Hugo wince and cover his ears.

"Do you have to do that right in my ear?" he complained.

"You should be prepared for it by now," Lily told him with a cheeky grin.

Twenty feet above their heads, James chucked the apple they were using as a Quaffle to Louis and he and Fred streaked towards the ground without a backwards glance.

Louis, Roxanne, and Dominique watched them land, chuck their brooms away and race Lily and Hugo back towards the Burrow.

"What's up with them?" Dominique asked, rounding on Roxanne.

"My guess is Bludger damage and fumes from being in the joke shop too long," Roxanne answered, sending an egg that had been charmed not to break at Louis, forcing him to roll to avoid it and, caught off guard, drop the apple.

"Not what I meant Roxie!" Dominique called as she soared beneath her brother to catch the fallen apple. "They've been acting weirder than usual since before we left school and I know you figured out what it was."

"What makes you think that?" Roxanne said, raising an eyebrow as she caught the apple Dominique had sent spinning in her direction.

"Come off it!" Louis exclaimed in exasperation, flinging his arms up and nearly falling off his broom. Dominique grabbed his collar to stop him tumbling backwards. "You sat next to _Molly _at breakfast this morning." He rolled his eyes, shoving his sister's hand away. Dominiique rolled her eyes at him before flying off.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Roxanne said, pretending to be sniff delicately. "Molly is a lovely person to enjoy breakfast with."

The other two stared at her for a moment before all three of them began cracking up. The last time Molly and Roxanne had sat next to each other, it had involved quite a bit of hair-pulling and eggs all over the kitchen.

"I want to read!" Lily announced as she, Hugo, James, and Fred burst into the room, red-faced and breathless from running full-tilt from the paddock to the attic bedroom. "I'm the only one who hasn't yet!"

"I don't know, Lily," Rose teased, holding the book close to her chest for a second before handing it over to her little cousin.

Lily settled between Teddy and James and let the book fall open on her crossed legs.

**Chapter Four At Flourish and Blots**

James groaned. "It's about a book store. Nothing interesting _ever _happens in a book store. It's like one of the ancient laws of the world or something."

Rose let out a huffy breath.

**Life at the Burrow was as different as possible from life on Privet Drive. **

"I should hope so," Hugo said forcefully.

**The Dursleys liked everything neat and ordered; **

Several people snorted. The Burrow was the opposite of neat and ordered and they all liked it that way.

**The Weasleys' house burst with the strange and unexpected. Harry got**

**a shock the first time he looked in the mirror over the kitchen mantelpiece and it shouted, "**_**Tuck your shirt in, scruffy**_**!" **

Albus couldn't help but send a smirk in Scorpius's direction. His friend went pink and mumbled "It is kind of unexpected."

**The ghoul in the attic howled and dropped pipes whenever he felt things were getting too quiet, and small explosions from Fred and George's bedroom were considered perfectly normal. **

There was some laughter mixed with sighs of wistfulness from Fred and James.

"Don't get me wrong, I love our house, but I wish we could have grown up in the Burrow when there was a Ghoul in the attic and explosions from Uncle Fred and George's room," James said a little sadly.

**What Harry found most unusual about life at Ron's, however, wasn't the talking mirror or the clanking ghoul: It was the fact that everybody there seemed to like him.**

"Of course they do, Dad!" Lily reassured the book, sounding a little teary.

Teddy bit his lip. No matter what Harry said to him, it would always kill him a little that the concept of people actually genuinely caring about him was so strange to his godfather.

Albus didn't show any reaction to this line because he knew Teddy, Rose, and Scorpius were all watching him, but it twisted his gut a little more. He felt Rose grab his hand and give it a quick squeeze anyway.

**Mrs. Weasley fussed over the state of his socks and tried to force him to eat fourth helpings at every meal. Mr. Weasley liked Harry to sit next to him at the dinner table so that he could bombard him with questions about life with Muggles, **

Grins were once again exchanged.

**asking him to explain how things like plugs and the postal service worked.**

"_**Fascinating**_**!" he would say as Harry talked him through using a telephone. "**_**Ingenious, **_**really, how many ways Muggles have found of getting along without magic."**

"It is really though," Rose said.

"Not you too!" Fred groaned as Hugo beamed at his sister.

"Well, it is. Think about all the things they've come up with without magic. A lot if it is more advanced than what we have! Like the internet! My grandparents have a computer and you can type in one word and get more information on what you're looking for than there is in a whole library!"

"So it's like the Hogwarts library on steroids?" James said. "Exactly what the nerds of the world need!"

Rose threw a pillow at him.

**Harry heard from Hogwarts one sunny morning about a week after he had arrived at the Burrow. He and Ron went down to breakfast to find Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Ginny already sitting at the kitchen table. The moment she saw Harry, Ginny accidentally knocked her porridge bowl to the floor with a loud clatter.**

James howled with laughter while Lily and Rose giggled and everyone else looked highly amused.

"She must have had it bad," Rose said between her giggles.

**Ginny seemed very prone to knocking things over whenever Harry entered a room. **

There was some more laughter at this. Ginny and clumsy didn't go together.

"It's a good thing she got over that before they got married or Dad wouldn't have been able to go to any of her matches," James grinned.

"I just can't believe Ginny was ever this _girly_," Hugo said, shaking his head.

Lily scowled at him and Rose smacked him lightly on the back of the head.

**She dived under the table to retrieve the bowl and emerged with her face glowing like the setting sun. Pretending he hadn't noticed this, Harry sat down and took the toast Mrs. Weasley offered him.**

"At least he can be a gentleman about it," Rose said approvingly.

Fred and James sniggered.

"**Letters from school," said Mr. Weasley, passing Harry and Ron identical envelopes of yellowish parchment, addressed in green ink. "Dumbledore already knows you're here, Harry — doesn't miss a trick, that man. You two've got them, too," he added, as Fred and George ambled in, still in their pajamas.**

**For a few minutes there was silence as they all read their letters. Harry's told him to catch the Hogwarts Express as usual from King's Cross station on September first. There was also a list of the new books he'd need for the coming year.**

**second-year students will require:**

_**The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2**_

**by Miranda Goshawk**

_**Break with a Banshee **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Gadding with Ghouls **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Holidays with Hags **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Travels with Trolls **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Voyages with Vampires **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Wanderings with Werewolves **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

_**Year with the Yeti **_**by Gilderoy Lockhart**

"Gees, did Lockhart get Dumbledore to sign a contract or something?" James asked incredulously.

"That's a lot of Lockhart," Fred agreed.

**Fred, who had finished his own list, peered over at Harry's.**

"**You've been told to get all Lockhart's books, too!" he said. "The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan — bet it's a witch."**

"Then she's bound to be rubbish if she's trying to teach them with Lockhart's books," Teddy said, shaking his head. "How on earth did Harry get so good at defense if my dad was the only decent teacher?"

"Well he must have been really _really _good," Lily told him with the sweet smile she reserved for Teddy alone.

**At this point, Fred caught his mother's eye and quickly busied himself with the marmalade.**

"**That lot won't come cheap," said George, with a quick look at his parents. "Lockhart's books are really expensive. . . ."**

"**Well, we'll manage," said Mrs. Weasley, but she looked worried. "I expect we'll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny's things secondhand."**

"That would suck, having to start with all second-hand things," James lamented. "After a couple years people can hardly tell, but first year everyone's stuff is all shiny and new and everyone will be able to tell."

"I know money's not the most important thing in the world, but I'm glad we never had to worry about it like that," Hugo said.

"**Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts this year?" Harry asked Ginny.**

"He didn't even know how old she was," James said, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

"Well, she hasn't even said two words to him," Teddy pointed out.

"It's weird to think there was ever a time when Dad hardly even noticed Mum," Lily said, giving the book in her lap an odd look.

**She nodded, blushing to the roots of her flaming hair, and put her elbow in the butter dish. **

Everybody snickered some more at this.

"Poor Mum," Lily giggled.

**Fortunately no one saw this except Harry, **

"Well, that was lucky," Fred commented cheerfully while the others laughed.

**because just then Ron's elder brother Percy walked in. **

"Yes! All eyes must be on Uncle Percy when he enters a room!" Fred said regally.

"We all must stare in awe at Uncle Percy's awesomeness!" James agreed.

They simultaneously burst into laughter. "You thinking what I am?" Fred choked to James.

"That we totally should do that?"

"Absolutely!"

"Hopeless, that's what you two are!" Rose exclaimed.

"Hopelessly amazing? Why thank you Rosie!"

There was a loud thud as Albus's copy of Quidditch through the Ages went flying into the wall behind Fred's head.

**He was already dressed, his Hogwarts prefect badge pinned to his**

**sweater vest.**

"**Morning, all," said Percy briskly. "Lovely day."**

**He sat down in the only remaining chair but leapt up again almost immediately, pulling from underneath him a molting, gray feather duster —at least, that was what Harry thought it was, until he saw that it was breathing.**

"Errol!" Everyone but Scorpius cheered excitedly.

"He must be practicing the feather-duster disguise. It saved his life on more than one occasion," James said knowledgeably.

"**Errol!" said Ron, taking the limp owl from Percy and extracting a letter from under its wing. "**_**Finally **_**— he's got Hermione's answer. I wrote to her saying we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursleys."**

**He carried Errol to a perch just inside the back door and tried to stand him on it, but Errol flopped straight off again so Ron laid him on the draining board instead, muttering, "Pathetic." Then he ripped open Hermione's letter and read it out loud:**

" '_**Dear Ron, and Harry if you're there,**_

" '_**I hope everything went all right and that Harry is okay and that you didn't do anything illegal to get him out, Ron, because that would get Harry into trouble, too. **_

"Well, that's that hope dashed," James said brightly.

"She knows them too well. Participating in law-breaking is mandatory for being members of the Golden Trio," Fred added.

"I think she'd be perfectly accepting of the illegal things they did to break Harry out if she knew what the Dursleys had been doing," Teddy said quietly.

_**I've been really worried **_

"I can only imagine," Rose mumbled. She tried to imagine not hearing from Al or Scorpius all summer, especially if she knew they were somewhere like the Dursleys. She'd have been going out of her mind.

_**and if Harry is all right, will you please let me know at once, but perhaps it would be better if you used a different owl, because I think another delivery might finish your one off.**_

"That's insulting," James said in an offended sort of voice. "Errol probably just spent the night saving the world and she's trying to cheat him out of a job! No respect, I tell you!"

" '_**I'm very busy with schoolwork, of course**_**' — **

"How can she be?" Fred and James exclaimed together.

"This is Mum you're talking about," Hugo reminded them in the exaggerated tone they usually used on him when he was being thick.

Fred smacked his forehead. "Of course! It would be a biological miracle if Rosie's mother wasn't spending her school holidays busy with schoolwork!"

"You know, I haven't worked on schoolwork at all this summer," Rose said with dignity.

"Only because you've been fulfilling your Gryffindor house Rule-breaking requirement," James said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Rose gave Lily a look that said plainly 'please just keep reading'

**How **_**can **_**she be?" said Ron in horror. "We're on vacation! **

"Our sentiment exactly," Fred told the book sympathetically.

— '_**and we're going to Londonnext Wednesday to buy my new books. Why don't we meet in DiagonAlley**_**?**

" '_**Let me know what's happening as soon as you can. Love from Hermione**_**.' "**

"Ooooooo!" Fred and James coursed in high-pitched voices.

"Ah, young love," James said, whipping a fake tear form his eye.

"So sweet and innocent," Fred added.

"Before they realize what torture it really is and it's too late to get out," James cast a wicked look in Teddy's direction.

"You two only say that because you've never had girlfriends," Teddy said easily.

Fred and James both began making retching noises.

"You are so immature," Rose told them

"**Well, that fits in nicely, we can go and get all your things then, too," said Mrs. Weasley, starting to clear the table. "What're you all up to today?"**

**Harry, Ron, Fred, and George were planning to go up the hill to a small paddock the Weasleys owned. It was surrounded by trees that blocked it from view of the village below, meaning that they could practice Quidditch there, as long as they didn't fly too high. **

"Ah, the Quidditch paddock," James said happily. "You know there's finally enough of us to have two full Quidditch teams –"

"If Molly and Lucy play," Fred reminded him before he could get too excited.

"Oh, right. Maybe we could imperious them…"

"You have a dark mind James Potter."

**They couldn't use real Quidditch balls, which would have been hard to explain if they had escaped and flown away over the village;**

"That's always really annoying," Fred commented. "You can only practice chasing, sometimes seeking, but not very well seeing as it's just nuts or something."

"Are you trying to push my clearly more superior Quidditch skills off on the fact that you can't practice your position over the holidays?" James inquired slyly.

"You would think you'd have more superior Quidditch skills than me since you can practice so much, but alas, natural-born talent has no rival," Fred shot back.

Lily quickly began reading again before they could get into a full-blown Quidditch argument.

**instead they threw apples for one another to catch. They took turns riding Harry's Nimbus Two Thousand, which was easily the best broom; Ron's old Shooting Star **

Every Quidditch player broke into hysterics at the idea of anybody actually _riding _one of those antiques. It was at least five minutes before Lily could get enough air in her lungs to keep reading.

**was often outstripped by passing butterflies.**

**Five minutes later they were marching up the hill, broomsticks over their shoulders. They had asked Percy if he wanted to join them, **

There was more laughter at this.

"You couldn't _pay _Uncle Percy to play Quidditch with us," James choked.

**but he had said he was busy. Harry had only seen Percy at mealtimes so far; he stayed shut in his room the rest of the time.**

"**Wish I knew what he was up to," said Fred, frowning. "He's not himself. His exam results came the day before you did; twelve O.W.L.s and he hardly gloated at all."**

Teddy whistled. "That's impressive."

"Molly probably got close to that," Rose said. "With all the studying she put in last year."

"I doubt we can count on her hardly gloating at all," Fred muttered.

Rose frowned at him. "Molly can be a right pain the neck sometimes – alright, most of the time - , but she's not the sort to gloat," she told Fred.

"**Ordinary Wizarding Levels," George explained, seeing Harry's puzzled look. "Bill got twelve, too. If we're not careful, we'll have another Head Boy in the family. I don't think I could stand the shame."**

"There is nothing shameful about being Head Boy," Teddy said as James and Fred snickered.

"Were you?" Scorpius asked, speaking for the first time in a while. For some reason he went slightly pink when Teddy looked at him and looked down at his hands.

"Yeah, I was, and no matter what these gits say, I wasn't a complete nerd," Teddy said, mock glaring at James and Fred.

"My dad wants me to be Head Boy," Scorpius admitted, feeling rather self-conscious. He'd told Rose and Albus that already of course, but it felt odd to lay bare something like that to a bigger group. He wasn't exactly sure why he did it. Maybe because he couldn't think of any other way to talk to his 'cousin' than by addressing the group at large.

"You don't wanna be Head Boy?" Hugo asked.

"I won't be Head Boy," Scorpius said simply.

"How do you know?" Teddy asked.

"Just not cut out for that," Scorpius shrugged, feeling everyone's eyes on him and wishing he'd never brought it up in the first place.

"You can't know that in first year," Teddy said firmly. "Look at Neville. Look what he was like first year. Would you have thought he was cut out to be a war hero? McGonagall gave him the Head Boy badge after the battle. She said she'd have given it to him long before if she'd been in the position to do that."

Scorpius blinked, not sure what to do with that information.

"Just don't give up on it yet," Teddy said, giving him a smile. Gees, even Scorpius was easier to cheer up than Al was. And he hardly knew Scorpius.

**Bill was the oldest Weasley brother. He and the next brother, Charlie, **

There was some cheering at the mention of the Uncle Charlie and Uncle Bill (even though it wasn't Bill's first mention).

**had already left Hogwarts. Harry had never met either of them, **

"That's such a weird thing to say," Lily commented, trying to imagine a time when her uncles were just a vague image to her father.

**but knew that Charlie was in Romania studying dragons and Bill in Egypt working for the wizard's bank, Gringotts.**

"Uncle Bill's job was so much cooler when he worked in Egypt," Fred lamented. "He was kick-arse curse breaker, and now he just works at a bank."

"**Dunno how Mum and Dad are going to afford all our school stuff this year," said George after a while. "Five sets of Lockhart books! And Ginny needs robes and a wand and everything. . . ."**

**Harry said nothing. He felt a bit awkward. Stored in an underground vault at Gringotts in London was a small fortune that his parents had left him. **

"That would be awkward," Hugo said sympathetically.

"Bet he'd split it with Gran and Granddad in a second if they'd take it," James said.

**Of course, it was only in the wizarding world that he had money; you couldn't use Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts in Muggle shops. **

"Er, yeah, we know," James said, giving the book an odd look.

"It's more recap, James," Rose said impatiently. "For the Muggles who don't know about Galleons and stuff."

"Of course it is, Rose," James said, rolling his eyes and looking at her as if she'd been the one to say something stupid. "I was just making sure the book knew that we already knew that."

"Smooth," Fred sniggered.

**He had never mentioned his Gringotts bank account to the Dursleys; he didn't think their horror of anything connected with magic would stretch to a large pile of gold.**

"Probably not but they couldn't have done anything about it. That money was left to Harry," Rose said smugly.

"Then he should have mentioned it a lot!" James exclaimed. "He should have rubbed it in their faces as revenge."

"This is Dad we're talking about," Albus reminded his brother.

**Mrs. Weasley woke them all early the following Wednesday. After a quick half a dozen bacon sandwiches each, they pulled on their coats and Mrs. Weasley took a flowerpot off the kitchen mantelpiece and peered inside.**

"**We're running low, Arthur," she sighed. "We'll have to buy some more today. . . . Ah well, guests first! After you, Harry dear!"**

**And she offered him the flowerpot.**

**Harry stared at them all watching him.**

"**W-what am I supposed to do?" he stammered.**

"You floo," James said slowly.

"He's never done it before," Rose said suddenly. "Wow, he must think they're all insane, passing around an old flowerpot."

"**He's never traveled by Floo powder," said Ron suddenly. "Sorry, Harry, I forgot."**

Rose rolled her eyes.

"**Never?" said Mr. Weasley. **

"That is a weird thought," James agreed.

"**But how did you get to Diagon Alley to buy your school things last year?"**

"**I went on the Underground —"**

"That'll get Granddad excited," Fred said with a grin.

"**Really?" said Mr. Weasley eagerly. "Were there **_**escapators**_**? How exactly —"**

"**Not **_**now, **_**Arthur," said Mrs. Weasley. "Floo powder's a lot quicker, dear, but goodness me, if you've never used it before —"**

"**He'll be all right, Mum," said Fred. "Harry, watch us first."**

**He took a pinch of glittering powder out of the flowerpot, stepped up to the fire, and threw the powder into the flames.**

**With a roar, the fire turned emerald green and rose higher than Fred, who stepped right into it, shouted, "Diagon Alley!" and vanished.**

"You know, it sounds pretty sweet when you say it like that," Fred said musingly.

"**You must speak clearly, dear," Mrs. Weasley told Harry as George dipped his hand into the flowerpot. "And be sure to get out at the right grate. . . ."**

"**The right what?" said Harry nervously as the fire roared and whipped George out of sight, too.**

"**Well, there are an awful lot of wizard fires to choose from, you know, but as long as you've spoken clearly —"**

"**He'll be fine, Molly, don't fuss," said Mr. Weasley, helping himself to Floo powder, too.**

"**But, dear, if he got lost, how would we ever explain to his aunt and uncle?"**

"I don't think they'd care much," Albus muttered so quietly that only Rose and Scorpius heard. They exchanged a worried look. Al had been very quiet since they'd come in from the pond. Neither one of them knew quite what to say to him about it all. Scorpius had never seen his friend like this; he was used to Al being easy-going and content for the most part. Rose had more experience having been Al's best friend since they were too small to remember, but it was rare that something got to him like this Dursley thing seemed to and she was at a loss as to how to comfort him or even if he wanted it.

"**They wouldn't mind," Harry reassured her. "Dudley would think it was a brilliant joke if I got lost up a chimney, don't worry about that —"**

Teddy sighed. Harry had practically tied a rope around his waist every time they left the house until he was about eight, terrified of loosing track of him. His grandmother hadn't been much better. He couldn't help but feel another pang at the thought of Harry not thinking anybody would care if he got lost. His spirits slipped a little more when he noticed Albus's down-cast expression and the worried looks Rose and Scorpius kept shooting each other and their friend.

"**Well . . . all right . . . you go after Arthur," said Mrs. Weasley.**

"**Now, when you get into the fire, say where you're going —"**

"**And keep your elbows tucked in," Ron advised.**

"Wish someone had told me that the first time I went alone," James grumbled, glowering in Teddy's direction and rubbing his elbow.

Teddy only smirked at him. Of course at the time it hadn't been so funny when he had to get a seven-year-old with a bloody elbow to stop crying in the middle of Flourish and Blots, but hindsight made everything more amusing.

"**And your eyes shut," said Mrs. Weasley. "The soot —"**

"I did tell you that," Teddy pointed out.

James rolled his eyes. "I already _knew _that from going with Mum and Dad."

"**Don't fidget," said Ron. "Or you might well fall out of the wrong fireplace —"**

"**But don't panic and get out too early; wait until you see Fred and George."**

**Trying hard to bear all this in mind, Harry took a pinch of Floo powder and walked to the edge of the fire. He took a deep breath, scattered the powder into the flames, and stepped forward; the fire felt like a warm breeze; he opened his mouth and immediately swallowed a lot of hot ash.**

Several people grimaced in sympathy.

"**D-Dia-gon Alley," he coughed.**

"That doesn't bode well," Rose frowned.

"Knowing Harry's luck, his first experience with Floo powder will not go as well as was hoped," Teddy agreed.

**It felt as though he were being sucked down a giant drain. **

"That's an interesting way to think of it," Scorpius said thoughtfully.

**He seemed to be spinning very fast — the roaring in his ears was deafening**

— **he tried to keep his eyes open but the whirl of green flames made him feel sick — something hard knocked his elbow**

"Dad told you so," Hugo pointed out.

**and he tucked it in tightly, still spinning and spinning — now it felt as though cold hands were slapping his face — squinting through his glasses he saw a blurred stream of fireplaces and snatched glimpses of the rooms beyond —**

"I wonder how many people look into your house through the Floo network and you never even know," James said thoughtfully.

**his bacon sandwiches were churning inside him — he closed his eyes again wishing it would stop, and then —**

**He fell, face forward, onto cold stone and felt the bridge of his glasses snap.**

There were a lot of winces and "Oooo"s. Albus reached up to rub the bridge of his glasses subconsciously. That had happened to him a few times and it always hurt.

**Dizzy and bruised, covered in soot, he got gingerly to his feet, holding his broken glasses up to his eyes. **

"Guess you guys were wrong," Fred said. "Sounds like that went really well."

**He was quite alone, but **_**where **_**he was, he had no idea. All he could tell was that he was standing in the stone fireplace of what looked like a large, dimly lit wizard's shop — but nothing in here was ever likely to be on a Hogwarts school list.**

**A glass case nearby held a withered hand on a cushion, **

Lily paused to make a disgusted face.

**a bloodstained pack of cards, and a staring glass eye. Evil-looking masks**

**stared down from the walls, an assortment of human bones lay upon the counter, and rusty, spiked instruments hung from the ceiling.**

"I definitely don't like this place," James announced with a shiver.

Teddy was frowning. It sounded like a dark shop… Harry couldn't have ended up in Nocturne Alley. That would just be perfect. Especially at that time when the Ministry didn't patrol it.

**Even worse, **

"This just keeps getting better," Rose muttered.

**the dark, narrow street Harry could see through the dusty shop window was definitely not Diagon Alley.**

"That'd be awful," Hugo said, shuddering at just the thought of getting lost in the Floo network. How would anybody find him? He could be anywhere.

**The sooner he got out of here, the better. **

"Never a truer word," Teddy mumbled anxiously.

**Nose still stinging where it had hit the hearth, Harry made his way swiftly and silently toward the door, but before he'd got halfway toward it, two people appeared on the other side of the glass — and one of them was the very last person Harry wanted to meet when he was lost, covered in**

**soot, and wearing broken glasses:**

Everyone tensed. There were a lot of people that could be, although Scorpius was pretty sure he knew who it would be.

**Draco Malfoy.**

The room groaned and Scorpius cursed silently. He really did not want to hear what his dad was doing in a shop that sounded as horrible as this one.

**Harry looked quickly around and spotted a large black cabinet to his left; he shot inside it and pulled the doors closed, leaving a small crack to peer through. Seconds later, a bell clanged, and Malfoy stepped into the shop.**

**The man who followed could only be Draco's father. **

Scorpius groaned again and buried his face in his hands. If his grandfather was involved this was not good.

**He had the same pale, pointed face and identical cold, gray eyes. **

Scorpius hated that he looked like his grandfather. He hated people recognizing him just from lists of old Death Eaters, hated the way people would sometimes look at him if they'd known his grandfather. It always made him feel a little sick and the older he got the worse it got because it was hard to glare daggers at a little kid.

**Mr. Malfoy crossed the shop, looking lazily at the items on display, and rang a bell on the counter before turning to his son and saying, "Touch**

**nothing, Draco."**

**Malfoy, who had reached for the glass eye, said, "I thought you were going to buy me a present."**

"**I said I would buy you a racing broom," said his father, drumming his fingers on the counter.**

"**What's the good of that if I'm not on the House team?" said Malfoy, looking sulky and bad-tempered. "Harry Potter got a Nimbus Two Thousand last year. Special permission from Dumbledore so he could play for Gryffindor. **

"Sounds like someone's jealous," Fred sang.

**He's not even that good, it's just because he's **_**famous **_**. . . **

All the Potters, including Albus, looked ready to spit with indignation and anger.

"Dad's good enough to play for England if he wanted to," James growled.

**famous for having a stupid **_**scar **_**on his forehead. . . ."**

"Trust me, Dad doesn't want to be famous or have that scar," Lily said earnestly.

**Malfoy bent down to examine a shelf full of skulls. ". . . everyone thinks he's so **_**smart, **_**wonderful **_**Potter **_**with his **_**scar**_** and his **_**broomstick **_**—"**

"Yup, definitely jealous," James nodded, still seething about the Quidditch comment.

Scorpius thought about this. Had his dad been jealous? Was he still? What exactly was he so jealous of? Did he really want a psycho mass-murderer after his blood and the hopes of the wizarding world on his shoulders? It was a new angle he hadn't thought about before. His Dad just didn't seem like the jealous type now, but the spoiled kid version of him in the book…

But it still didn't tell him what had changed. These books were just giving him more questions and no answers.

"**You have told me this at least a dozen times already," said Mr. Malfoy, with a quelling look at his son. "And I would remind you that it is not — prudent — to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear **

"I don't think I like the way he's saying that," James said crossly.

— **ah, Mr. Borgin."**

Teddy wrung his hands, "Damnit, this is not good."

"Why? What is it?" James asked nervously.

"He must be in _Borgin_ and Burkes," Teddy explained. "That's in Nocturne Alley. And this is only a few years before the second war broke out. The place is probably crawling with Death Eaters and the likes. Not the place for The Boy Who Lived to get lost."

"Right," James said, gulping.

"Lily? Keep reading," Albus prompted because Lily was gazing at Teddy with fearful eyes.

**A stooping man had appeared behind the counter, smoothing his greasy hair back from his face.**

"**Mr. Malfoy, what a pleasure to see you again," said Mr. Borgin in a voice as oily as his hair. "Delighted — and young Master Malfoy, too — charmed. How may I be of assistance? I must show you, just in today, and very reasonably priced —"**

"**I'm not buying today, Mr. Borgin, but selling," said Mr. Malfoy.**

"**Selling?" The smile faded slightly from Mr. Borgin's face.**

"Well, at least we get to see that creep lose a sale," Fred muttered.

"**You have heard, of course, that the Ministry is conducting more raids," said Mr. Malfoy, taking a roll of parchment from his inside pocket and unraveling it for Mr. Borgin to read. "I have a few — ah — items at home that might embarrass me, if the Ministry were to call. . . ."**

Scorpius shuddered, imagining what kind _items _those might be. He thought they'd probably do more than just embarrass his grandfather. More like get him arrested.

**Mr. Borgin fixed a pair of pince-nez to his nose and looked down the list.**

"**The Ministry wouldn't presume to trouble you, sir, surely?" **

**Mr. Malfoy's lip curled.**

"**I have not been visited yet. The name Malfoy still commands a certain respect, **

Scorpius shifted, thinking about the way the other Slytherins looked at him now. The name Malfoy only got him dirty looks from both sides now.

Rose noticed this and nudged him, offering a smile when he looked up.

Except, ironically, with the Weasleys and Potters.

**yet the Ministry grows ever more meddlesome. There are rumors about a new Muggle Protection Act — no doubt that flea-bitten, Muggle-loving fool Arthur Weasley **

Fred and James growled, Hugo went red with fury, Lily gagged a little after saying those words, Albus and Rose glared at the book, Scorpius clenched his teeth, and Teddy clenched his fists. This was the sort of things he'd gotten into fights over at Hogwarts.

"Granddad knew what he was doing, he was on the right track," Hugo said angrily.

**is behind it —"**

**Harry felt a hot surge of anger.**

"Us too, Dad," James told the book furiously.

"— **and as you see, certain of these poisons might make it **_**appear **_**—"**

Scorpius was starting to feel a little sick. Had his grandfather actually used those poisons? On Muggles? He didn't like his grandfather much if only because he didn't seem all that sorry for the role he played in the war, but Scorpius didn't know the extent of his crimes. Since most of the other Death Eater spawn hated him, he thought his grandfather must not have been able to do anything too bad, but…

"**I understand, sir, of course," said Mr. Borgin. "Let me see . . ."**

"**Can I have **_**that**_**?" interrupted Draco, pointing at the withered hand on its cushion.**

Again, Lily gagged a little. "Who would actually _want_ that?"

"**Ah, the Hand of Glory!" said Mr. Borgin, abandoning Mr. Malfoy's list and scurrying over to Draco. "Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! Your son has fine taste, sir."**

"**I hope my son will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin," said Mr. Malfoy coldly, and Mr. Borgin said quickly, "No offense, sir, no offense meant —"**

"**Though if his grades don't pick up," said Mr. Malfoy, more coldly still, "that may indeed be all he is fit for —"**

"Sounds like someone's in trouble," James stage whispered.

"**It's not my fault," retorted Draco. **

"Oh really?" Rose said, raising an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure you're the one who earns your grades."

"**The teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger —"**

"Beat you in everything because she's a genius!" James crowed, punching the air in triumph.

"**I would have thought you'd be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam," snapped Mr. Malfoy.**

Everyone was furious. Rose was sputtering incoherently and Albus was growling something that sounded like "Kick your arse in a duel any day, even when she was a kid."

Scorpius looked miserable again. Did his grandfather have to go around saying that? Yes, he supposed he did, seeing as that's practically the motto of the Death Eaters.

"**Ha!" said Harry under his breath, pleased to see Draco looking both abashed and angry.**

"HA!" James and Fred both yelled, echoing Harry's sentiment.

"**It's the same all over," said Mr. Borgin, in his oily voice. "Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere —"**

"As it should," Rose said furiously. "It doesn't matter where you come from, your family is not who _you _are."

"**Not with me," said Mr. Malfoy, his long nostrils flaring.**

Most people were seething after that remark.

"**No, sir, nor with me, sir," said Mr. Borgin, with a deep bow.**

"**In that case, perhaps we can return to my list," said Mr. Malfoy shortly. "I am in something of a hurry, Borgin, I have important business elsewhere today —"**

"I feel bad for whoever his business is with," James muttered.

**They started to haggle. Harry watched nervously as Draco drew nearer and nearer to his hiding place, **

"Don't find him, don't find him, don't find him," Rose was changing under her breath, crossing her fingers.

"That could be very bad," Hugo agreed nervously.

"What do you think would happen?" James asked just as nervously.

"I hope we're not about to find out," Teddy muttered.

**examining the objects for sale. Draco paused to examine a long coil of hangman's rope and to read, smirking, the card propped on a magnificent necklace of opals, **_**Caution: Do Not Touch. Cursed **_**— **_**Has Claimed the Lives ofNineteen Muggle Owners to Date.**_

"That's horrible!" Lily squeaked, looking revolted.

"Disgusting," Rose agreed.

"And he was _smirking _as he read that?" James asked, horrified.

"Your dad was a twisted little git when he was a kid," Fred told Scorpius.

"I don't think he's like that anymore," Scorpius said miserably. He kept saying that, but was it really true? His dad didn't talk much about the past, how did Scorpius know he'd changed at all? Would he still want a necklace like that cursed opal one? Scorpius wasn't sure anymore.

**Draco turned away and saw the cabinet right in front of him. **

The room tensed. Rose started muttering her chant faster.

**He walked forward — he stretched out his hand for the handle —**

"Come on Mr. Malfoy, finish your damn business and get your git of a kid out of there," James said, voice tense with nerves.

"**Done," said Mr. Malfoy at the counter. "Come, Draco —"**

There were many sighs of relief. James blinked.

"Wow, that was pretty weird," he said. "I wonder if I some awesome power over books or something. Come on, Mr. Malfoy, get eaten by a giant snake!"

"James!" Rose hissed, looking pointedly at Scorpius.

James had the grace to look sheepish. Scorpius shrugged at him.

**Harry wiped his forehead on his sleeve as Draco turned away.**

"**Good day to you, Mr. Borgin. I'll expect you at the manor tomorrow to pick up the goods."**

**The moment the door had closed, Mr. Borgin dropped his oily manner.**

"**Good day yourself, **_**Mister **_**Malfoy, and if the stories are true, you haven't sold me half of what's hidden in your **_**manor. **_**. . ."**

"That's a scary thought," James mumbled.

"Yeah, especially since that's the manor I live in now," Scorpius added with a shudder.

**Muttering darkly, Mr. Borgin disappeared into a back room. Harry waited for a minute in case he came back, then, quietly as he could, slipped out of the cabinet, past the glass cases, and out of the shop door.**

Teddy looked nervous. At least in that cabinet he couldn't get snatched by Death Eaters or hags or whatever (though he did come close), but now…

Harry needed to find the Weasleys, fast.

**Clutching his broken glasses to his face, **

"I forgot his glasses were broken," Albus groaned. "That will make it ten times harder just to walk around! This is not good."

**Harry stared around. He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the Dark Arts. The one he'd just left, Borgin and Burkes, looked like the largest, but opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads and, two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black spiders. **

Hugo shuddered violently.

**Two shabby-looking wizards were watching him from the shadow of a doorway, muttering to each other. **

Teddy closed his eyes and willed his twelve-year-old godfather to get the hell out of there before something horrible could happen to him.

**Feeling jumpy, Harry set off, trying to hold his glasses on straight and hoping against hope he'd be able to find a way out of here.**

**An old wooden street sign hanging over a shop selling poisonous candles told him he was in Knockturn Alley. This didn't help, as Harry had never heard of such a place. **

Teddy, James, Albus, and Rose all groaned at the same time.

"He doesn't even know it's by Diagon Alley," Teddy said in frustration.

**He supposed he hadn't spoken clearly enough through his mouthful of ashes back in the Weasleys' fire. Trying to stay calm, he wondered what**

**to do.**

"Yes, just don't start freaking out," Teddy instructed pointlessly.

"I'd be freaking out," Hugo said. "If I didn't know where Knocktrun Alley is."

"It's not a good situation," Rose muttered. She'd gotten lost in Diagon Alley once when she was small. Her mother had found her sobbing on the steps of a building after what seemed to Rose like hours, but was actually about twenty minutes. It had given her nightmares for weeks, all the people and no idea how her parents would ever find her. Of course, her uncle was a lot older than she'd been, but then again he was in Knockturn Alley… and nobody knew where to look for him.

"**Not lost are you, my dear?" said a voice in his ear, making him jump.**

**An aged witch stood in front of him, holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole human fingernails. **

"Get away from her, get away from her now!" Teddy said feverishly.

"Oh, come on Teddy! She's got whole human fingernails! She's bound to be lovely!" Fred said to lighten the mood. It only worked slightly.

**She leered at him, showing mossy teeth. **

"Ewww!" Lily and Hugo chorused together.

**Harry backed away.**

"Good idea," James murmured subconsciously, nodding.

"**I'm fine, thanks," he said. "I'm just —"**

"**HARRY! What d'yeh think yer doin' down there?"**

"Thank god!" James said, looking relieved. Teddy being so nervous had made _him _more nervous.

"Is that Hagrid?" Albus asked hopefully.

"Sounds like it," Rose said, sounding relieved.

Teddy didn't relax. Auror training had taught him never to let his guard down until danger had passed beyond a doubt.

**Harry's heart leapt. So did the witch; a load of fingernails cascaded down over her feet and she cursed **

Fred and James snickered.

"Serves her right for trying to take advantage of a lost child," Rose said disgustedly.

**as the massive form of Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, came striding toward them, beetle-black eyes flashing over his great bristling beard.**

Teddy let out a sigh of relief. It really was Hagrid and he wouldn't let anything happen to Harry now. He'd get him out of there.

"**Hagrid!" Harry croaked in relief. "I was lost — Floo powder —"**

**Hagrid seized Harry by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from the witch, knocking the tray right out of her hands. Her shrieks followed them all the way along the twisting alleyway out into bright sunlight. Harry saw a familiar, snow-white marble building in the distance — Gringotts Bank. Hagrid had steered him right into Diagon Alley.**

"**Yer a mess!" said Hagrid gruffly, brushing soot off Harry so forcefully he nearly knocked him into a barrel of dragon dung outside an apothecary.**

"Very helpful, that would be," Fred snorted.

"At least he found him," Rose pointed out.

"**Skulkin' around Knockturn Alley, I dunno — dodgy place, Harry — don' want no one ter see yeh down there —"**

"No kidding," Teddy muttered.

"**I realized **_**that,**_**" said Harry, ducking as Hagrid made to brush him off again. "I told you, I was lost — what were you doing down there, anyway?"**

"Er, yeah, what was Hagrid doing down there?" James asked.

"Nothing bad," Albus said firmly, glaring at his brother.

"I never said I though he was up to something," James said, rolling his eyes. "I'm just wondering why he was done there."

"Well, if you two would shut up, I'd tell you," Lily said, irritated.

"Right, sorry Lils," Albus mumbled.

"_**I **_**was lookin' fer a Flesh-Eatin' Slug Repellent," growled Hagrid.**

"See?" Albus said.

"I never argued with you, you little prat," James said in a long-suffering voice.

"**They're ruinin' the school cabbages. Yer not on yer own?"**

"**I'm staying with the Weasleys but we got separated," Harry explained. "I've got to go and find them. . . ."**

"Yeah, Gran's probably going nuts," Rose said suddenly.

"That'd be pretty scary though. They've got no idea where he is and he doesn't know how to find them," Hugo agreed.

**They set off together down the street.**

"**How come yeh never wrote back ter me?" said Hagrid as Harry jogged alongside him (he had to take three steps to every stride of Hagrid's enormous boots). Harry explained all about Dobby and the Dursleys.**

"**Lousy Muggles," growled Hagrid. "If I'd've known —"**

"**Harry! Harry! Over here!"**

**Harry looked up and saw Hermione Granger **

"Mum!" Rose and Hugo cheered as the others chorused "(Aunt) Hermione!"

**standing at the top of the white flight of steps to Gringotts. She ran down to meet them, her bushy brown hair flying behind her.**

"**What happened to your glasses? Hello, Hagrid — Oh, it's **_**wonderful **_**to see you two again — Are you coming into Gringotts, Harry?"**

"Geez, give them a chance to answer your questions," Fred laughed.

"She should be an auctioneer," James mused. "She sure can talk fast enough."

"**As soon as I've found the Weasleys," said Harry.**

"**Yeh won't have long ter wait," Hagrid said with a grin. **

**Harry and Hermione looked around: Sprinting up the crowded street were Ron, Fred, George, Percy, and Mr. Weasley.**

"**Harry," Mr. Weasley panted. "We **_**hoped **_**you'd only gone one grate too far. . . ." He mopped his glistening bald patch. "Molly's frantic — **

"I bet," Teddy mumbled.

**she's coming now —"**

"**Where did you come out?" Ron asked.**

"**Knockturn Alley," said Hagrid grimly.**

"_**Excellent**_**!" said Fred and George together.**

"Er, not excellent," Teddy countered. "Creepy and dangerous, but not excellent."

"**We've never been allowed in," said Ron enviously.**

"I'd hope not," Teddy said, shaking his head.

"Have you ever been in there?" James asked curiously. He'd heard bad stories about the place, but it always had a kind of dark pull, maybe just because he was forbidden to go there.

"Only a few times for Auror stuff," Teddy said. "But it's a lot better now than it used to be. Back even ten years ago it was pretty dodgy. A lot of ex-criminals and stuff. The ministry only just started doing patrols and shutting down business there."

"**I should ruddy well think not," growled Hagrid.**

**Mrs. Weasley now came galloping into view, her handbag swinging wildly in one hand, Ginny just clinging onto the other.**

"**Oh, Harry — oh, my dear — you could have been anywhere —"**

"Too right, he could have," Rose said, sympathizing with her Grandmother's panic.

**Gasping for breath she pulled a large clothes brush out of her bag and began sweeping off the soot Hagrid hadn't managed to beat away. Mr. Weasley took Harry's glasses, gave them a tap of his wand, and returned them, good as new.**

"Good," Albus said, smiling a little. His grandfather was always there to fix things, be it glasses or a broken toy or even bruised feelings.

"**Well, gotta be off," said Hagrid, who was having his hand wrung by Mrs. Weasley ("Knockturn Alley! If you hadn't found him, Hagrid!"). **

Teddy shuddered at that idea.

"**See yer at Hogwarts!" And he strode away, head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the packed street.**

"**Guess who I saw in Borgin and Burkes?" Harry asked Ron and Hermione as they climbed the Gringotts steps. "Malfoy and his father."**

"**Did Lucius Malfoy buy anything?" said Mr. Weasley sharply behind them.**

"**No, he was selling —"**

"**So he's worried," said Mr. Weasley with grim satisfaction. "Oh, I'd love to get Lucius Malfoy for something. . . ."**

"We'd love to see it," James said enthusiastically.

"**You be careful, Arthur," said Mrs. Weasley sharply as they were bowed into the bank by a goblin at the door. "That family's trouble. Don't go biting off more than you can chew —"**

"Come on, Granddad could take him!" Fred said.

"Maybe, but the Malfoys had a lot of gold back then, still do have quite a bit," Teddy said, frowning a little at Fred. "Not to mention the whole Death Eater thing. Malfoy could do a lot of damage if he had a reason to."

Fred appeared to have nothing to say to that.

"**So you don't think I'm a match for Lucius Malfoy?" said Mr. Weasley indignantly, but he was distracted almost at once by the sight of Hermione's parents, who were standing nervously at the counter that ran all along the great marble hall, waiting for Hermione to introduce them.**

"Gran and Granddad Granger!" Hugo said happily, exchanging a grin with his sister. "I think that's the first mention of them in person."

"You know, I wonder how much of this _they _know," Rose said thoughtfully.

"I doubt all of it or they wouldn't have let Mum go back to Hogwarts after first year," Hugo said.

"Well, then, yeah. But what about now? I mean these books seem to be quite popular in the Muggle world now."

Hugo shrugged.

"**But you're **_**Muggles**_**!" said Mr. Weasley delightedly. **

Nearly everybody cracked up at this greeting. Scorpius was biting his lip because he didn't think it was appropriate for him to laugh, but the others were nearly rolling around laughing. It was so very classic Granddad Weasley.

"**We must have a drink! What's that you've got there? Oh, you're changing**

**Muggle money. Molly, look!" He pointed excitedly at the ten pound notes in Mr. Granger's hand.**

"**Meet you back here," Ron said to Hermione as the Weasleys and Harry were led off to their underground vaults by another Gringotts goblin.**

**The vaults were reached by means of small, goblin-driven carts that sped along minature train tracks through the bank's underground tunnels. Harry enjoyed the breakneck journey down to the Weasleys' vault, but felt dreadful, far worse than he had in Knockturn Alley, when it was opened. **

"Why?" Hugo asked curiously.

**There was a very small pile of silver Sickles inside, and just one gold Galleon. Mrs. Weasley felt right into the corners before sweeping the whole lot into her bag.**

"Oh," Hugo said. He looked down at his hands.

"I didn't realize it was that bad," Rose said softly.

"How on earth did they raise seven kids on that?" James asked.

"Your grandfather worked really hard and they did without a lot of things," Teddy said.

**Harry felt even worse when they reached his vault. He tried to block the contents from view as he hastily shoved handfuls of coins into a leather bag.**

**Back outside on the marble steps, they all separated. Percy muttered vaguely about needing a new quill. Fred and George had spotted their friend from Hogwarts, Lee Jordan. **

"Ah, Uncle Lee," Fred said with a grin.

**Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were going to a secondhand robe shop. Mr. Weasley was insisting on taking the Grangers off to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink.**

Rose and Hugo grinned at each other. They'd heard the story of when their grandparents first met their other grandparents for the first time. Their mother's parents had thought Arthur was a bit mad at first, what with him going on about plugs, but then they'd started talking about magic and realized that they were sounding just like Mr. Weasley.

"**We'll all meet at Flourish and Blotts in an hour to buy your schoolbooks," said Mrs. Weasley, setting off with Ginny. **

"Oh, something's supposed to happen there," Rose said suddenly, remembering the chapter title.

"**And not one step down Knockturn Alley!" she shouted at the twins' retreating backs.**

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione strolled off along the winding, cobbled street. The bag of gold, silver, and bronze jangling cheerfully in Harry's pocket was clamoring to be spent, so he bought three large strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice creams, **

"Yum," James said, a dreamy look coming over his face.

**which they slurped happily as they wandered up the alley, examining the fascinating shop windows. Ron gazed longingly at a full set of Chudley Cannon robes in the windows of Quality Quidditch Supplies, until**

**Hermione dragged them off to buy ink and parchment next door.**

Rose shook her head. "So just like our last trip to Diagon Alley."

**In Gambol and Japes Wizarding Joke Shop, they met Fred, George, and Lee Jordan, who **

"Would later run them out of Business," Fred said smugly.

He and James high-fived.

**were stocking up on Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks, **

"Pitiful compared WWW fireworks," James said, shaking his head.

"They were pretty cool back in the day though," Fred said.

**and in a tiny junk shop full of broken wands, **

"Who would buy a broken wand?" Scorpius asked bemusedly.

Everyone just shrugged.

**lopsided brass scales, and old cloaks covered in potion stains they found Percy, deeply immersed in a small and deeply boring book called **_**Prefects Who Gained Power.**_

Fred and James instantly began to make choking noises.

"_**A study of Hogwarts prefects and their later careers,**_**" Ron read aloud off the back cover. "That sounds **_**fascinating. **_**. . ."**

"**Go away," Percy snapped.**

" '**Course, he's very ambitious, Percy, he's got it all planned out. . . . He wants to be Minister of Magic . . ." Ron told Harry and Hermione in an undertone as they left Percy to it.**

"Doesn't seem to want that anymore," Rose said thoughtfully. "Wonder what changed his mind."

"Something to do with the war, probably," James answered, surprisingly wisely. "Always is."

**An hour later, they headed for Flourish and Blotts. They were by no means the only ones making their way to the bookshop. As they approached it, they saw to their surprise a large crowd jostling outside the doors, trying to get in. **

"I wonder why," James said.

**The reason for this **

Lily read with a very exasperated voice.

**was proclaimed by a large banner stretched across the upper windows:**

**GILDEROY LOCKHART**

**will be signing copies of his autobiography**

_**MAGICAL ME**_

**today 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.**

"**We can actually meet him!" Hermione squealed. **

"Oh boy!" Teddy said sarcastically. "That ought to be good."

"**I mean, he's written almost the whole booklist!"**

**The crowd seemed to be made up mostly of witches around Mrs. Weasley's age. A harassed-looking wizard stood at the door, saying, "Calmly, please, ladies. . . . Don't push, there . . . mind the books, now. . . ." **

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione squeezed inside. A long line wound right to the back of the shop, where Gilderoy Lockhart was signing his books. They each grabbed a copy of **_**The Standard Book of Spells,Grade 2 **_**and sneaked up the line to where the rest of the Weasleys were standing with Mr. and Mrs. Granger.**

"**Oh, there you are, good," said Mrs. Weasley. She sounded breathless and kept patting her hair. "We'll be able to see him in a minute. . . ."**

"Gran's got it bad," James laughed along with Fred.

"From the sound of it, Hermione was pretty impressed with him too," Lily added, smirking at the horrified look on Hugo's face.

**Gilderoy Lockhart came slowly into view, seated at a table surrounded by large pictures of his own face, all winking and flashing dazzlingly white teeth at the crowd. The real Lockhart was wearing robes of forget-me-not blue that exactly matched his eyes; his pointed wizard's hat was set at a jaunty angle on his wavy hair.**

"Dreeeeaaaamy!" Fred and James said together in high-pitched voices, fluttering their eyelashes.

**A short, irritable-looking man was dancing around taking photographs with a large black camera that emitted puffs of purple smoke with every blinding flash.**

"**Out of the way, there," he snarled at Ron, moving back to get a better shot. "This is for the **_**Daily Prophet **_**—"**

"**Big deal," said Ron, rubbing his foot where the photographer had stepped on it.**

Hugo looked indignant.

**Gilderoy Lockhart heard him. He looked up. He saw Ron — and then he saw Harry. He stared. Then he leapt to his feet and positively shouted, "It **_**can't **_**be Harry Potter?"**

"Just exactly what Dad was hoping for," James grinned.

**The crowd parted, whispering excitedly; Lockhart dived forward, seized Harry's arm, and pulled him to the front. The crowd burst into applause. Harry's face burned as Lockhart shook his hand for the photographer, who was clicking away madly, wafting thick smoke over the Weasleys.**

"**Nice big smile, Harry," said Lockhart, through his own gleaming teeth. "Together, you and I are worth the front page."**

"Yup, Dad's finally got a shot at front page news with this Lockhart bloke next to him," James said sarcastically.

"Finally! His dreams will be fulfilled!" Fred said dramatically.

Rose decided the best way to go was to ignore them.

**When he finally let go of Harry's hand, Harry could hardly feel his fingers. He tried to sidle back over to the Weasleys, but Lockhart threw an arm around his shoulders and clamped him tightly to his side.**

"**Ladies and gentlemen," he said loudly, waving for quiet. "What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time!**

"**When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography — **

"Oh yes, that's what he's been looking forward to for weeks!" Fred said. "Merlin this bloke is smarmy."

**which I shall be happy to present him now, free of charge —" The crowd**

**applauded again. "He had **_**no idea,**_**" Lockhart continued, giving Harry a little shake that made his glasses slip to the end of his nose, "that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, **_**Magical Me. **_

They all exchanged nervous looks. What was he talking about?

**He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. **

"He can't possibly be saying what I think he's saying," Teddy said in a hollow sort of voice.

Horrified looks were beginning to dawn on the others' faces.

**Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"**

"NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Fred and James shouted together, gripping their hair and looking like the world was ending.

The others were looking either horrified or disgusted or a mixture of both. There was no way they would learn anything this year. This was way worse than having a fan witch as their defense teacher. It seemed like Lockhart was his biggest fan anyway.

"How could Dumbledore have let this happen!" Teddy groaned, flopping backwards.

"Well, after about twenty years you start to run out of people to fill the job," James pointed out, still looking quite mad with his normally-messy hair sticking up in every direction.

"But this," Teddy said, shaking his head.

**The crowd cheered and clapped and Harry found himself being presented with the entire works of Gilderoy Lockhart. Staggering slightly under their weight, he managed to make his way out of the limelight to the edge of the room, where Ginny was standing next to her new cauldron.**

"**You have these," Harry mumbled to her, tipping the books into the cauldron. "I'll buy my own —"**

"Oooooo!" Fred said in a high-pitched voice, smirking at James.

"Shut up, Fred. Harry's being this great thing called 'chivalrous'. You might want to try it sometime if you ever want to get a girlfriend," Rose snapped.

"**Bet you loved that, didn't you, Potter?" said a voice Harry had no trouble recognizing. **

Scorpius sighed. He'd hoped they'd had their fill of his family for one chapter. Apparently he wasn't that lucky.

**He straightened up and found himself face-to-face with Draco Malfoy, who was wearing his usual sneer.**

"_**Famous **_**Harry Potter," said Malfoy. "Can't even go into a **_**bookshop **_**without making the front page."**

The Potters all ground their teeth and everyone else looked rather ticked off, too. Add insult to embarrassment.

"**Leave him alone, he didn't want all that!" said Ginny. It was the first time she had spoken in front of Harry. **

"Landmark moment!" Fred said, holding up his hands dramatically.

"It's good he's got someone else to stick up for him," Rose said, trying not to giggle. She knew it wasn't romantic yet, but reading about her aunt and uncle like this, they were just so cute!

**She was glaring at Malfoy.**

"He should be afraid," James stage whispered, having been on the receiving end of quite a few of his mother's glares.

"**Potter, you've got yourself a **_**girlfriend **_**!" drawled Malfoy. **

"Not quite yet," Teddy said, smiling.

"Does he have to tease her, though?" Rose sighed, feeling bad for her aunt.

**Ginny went scarlet as Ron and Hermione fought their way over, both clutching stacks of Lockhart's books.**

"**Oh, it's you," said Ron, looking at Malfoy as if he were something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. "Bet you're surprised to see Harry here, eh?"**

"**Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop, Weasley," retorted Malfoy. "I suppose your parents will go hungry for a month to pay for all those."**

"Old material, dude," James said, trying to sound bored and not furious.

**Ron went as red as Ginny. He dropped his books into the cauldron, too,**

"Oh snap!" Fred said, grinning.

**and started toward Malfoy, but Harry and Hermione grabbed the back of his jacket.**

"Come on," Fred whined. "I want some action!"

"He can't go around punching people in the middle of a bookshop," Rose sighed.

"**Ron!" said Mr. Weasley, struggling over with Fred and George. "What are you doing? It's too crowded in here, let's go outside."**

"Yes, get away from that git," James urged. "Seeing as you can't punch him," he added looking over at Rose and scowling slightly.

"**Well, well, well — Arthur Weasley."**

**It was Mr. Malfoy. He stood with his hand on Draco's shoulder, sneering in just the same way.**

"**Lucius," said Mr. Weasley, nodding coldly.**

"I didn't think it was possible for Granddad to be cold," Hugo said. "He's serious and stern when he has to be, but never cold… to anyone."

"Lucius Malfoy is a special case," Teddy said carefully, glancing at Scorpius.

Scorpius thought his grandfather deserved every bit of cold Mr. Weasley threw his way.

"**Busy time at the Ministry, I hear," said Mr. Malfoy. "All those raids . . . I hope they're paying you overtime?"**

**He reached into Ginny's cauldron and extracted, from amid the glossy Lockhart books, a very old, very battered copy of **_**A Beginner'sGuide to Transfiguration.**_

"**Obviously not," Mr. Malfoy said. "Dear me, what's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you well for it?"**

The word angry did not cover the expressions crossing everyone's faces, even – especially – Scorpius's.

"Granddad's the best!" Hugo said, his bottom lip trembling. "He's the very best! That –" he swallowed his next word with a glance at Rose, "he better just shut up. He's the one barely out of Azkaban. If anyone's a disgrace, it's him!"

"Hear, hear," James said, surprisingly seriously.

Lily tore her eyes away from Hugo's unusually-emotion-filled face and kept reading.

**Mr. Weasley flushed darker than either Ron or Ginny.**

"**We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy," he said.**

"You tell him, Granddad," James muttered while Fred nodded vigorously.

"**Clearly," said Mr. Malfoy, his pale eyes straying to Mr. and Mrs. Granger, who were watching apprehensively. "The company you keep, Weasley . . . and I thought your family could sink no lower —"**

Lily was Weasley-red as she read this, Hugo looked as if he'd been slapped, Rose's mouth was gaping, Albus was white with fury, Fred and James were shaking and Teddy looked mutinous. He knew the most about this kind of prejudice, but it still shocked him that people would say things like that right out loud in the middle of a public place. It was horrible.

Lily saw the next line and kept reading before anyone cold interrupt.

**There was a thud of metal as Ginny's cauldron went flying; Mr. Weasley had thrown himself at Mr. Malfoy, knocking him backward into a bookshelf. **

There was a short pause while they tried to imagine their even-tempered grandfather tackling someone in the middle of a crowded book store. Then –

"FANTASTIC!" Fred and James yelled together, jumping to their feet and doing a sort of victory dance.

"Give it to him good, Granddad!" Fred called.

"And you said punching someone doesn't do any good," James said to Rose in a scathing tone.

She crossed her arms and tried to look disapproving, but couldn't hide the grin that had spread across her face, just as it had on Albus's and Scorpius's on either side of her. He really did deserve it.

Hugo, not much for wild displays of emotion, got up and joined James and Fred in their dancing, and Lily collapsed with laughter.

After a few minutes of celebrating, Teddy (who was looking positively giddy himself) decided they were probably to jubilant at the idea of violence, even towards Mr. Malfoy, and told Lily to keep reading.

**Dozens of heavy spellbooks came thundering down on all their heads; there was a yell of, "Get him, Dad!" from Fred or George; **

Fred and James smacked a high five, grinning broadly.

**Mrs. Weasley was shrieking, "No, Arthur, no!"; the crowd stampeded backward, knocking more shelves over; "Gentlemen, please — please!" cried the assistant, and then, louder than all —**

"**Break it up, there, gents, break it up —"**

**Hagrid was wading toward them through the sea of books. In an instant he had pulled Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy apart.**

"Aw, Hagrid," Fred said disappointedly.

"You're ruining Granddad's moment," James said indignantly.

**Mr. Weasley had a cut lip and Mr. Malfoy had been hit in the eye by an **_**Encyclopedia of Toadstools. **_**He was still holding Ginny's old Transfiguration book. He thrust it at her, his eyes glittering with malice.**

"**Here, girl — take your book — it's the best your father can give you —" **

**Pulling himself out of Hagrid's grip he beckoned to Draco and swept from the shop.**

"**Yeh should've ignored him, Arthur," said Hagrid, almost lifting Mr. Weasley off his feet as he straightened his robes. "Rotten ter the core, the whole family, everyone knows that — no Malfoy's worth listenin' ter — **

"Well, we know that's not true," Rose said, her expression softening as she smiled at Scorpius.

Albus nodded earnestly and even Teddy smiled.

Scorpius felt heat creeping up his cheeks and looked down, muttering, "Thanks guys." It was nice to hear after spending a year in the Slytherin dormitory.

**bad blood, that's what it is — come on now — let's get outta here."**

**The assistant looked as though he wanted to stop them from leaving, but he barely came up to Hagrid's waist and seemed to think better of it. **

Several people smirked.

**They hurried up the street, the Grangers shaking with fright **

"I bet," Rose said. "That's not exactly the best first impression of Granddad."

**and Mrs. Weasley beside herself with fury.**

"**A **_**fine **_**example to set for your children . . . **_**brawling **_**in public. . . **_**what **_**Gilderoy Lockhart must've thought —"**

James, who'd been sniggering up until that point, looked suddenly sour. "Who cares what that git thought. He probably thought it was over the last copy of one of his books, that's how full of himself he is. Who sets up tons of pictures of themselves anyway?"

"I'm surprised you haven't done it yet, the way you talk sometimes," Rose shot at him.

James looked offended. "I'm not nearly as serious as this guy is. He really thinks he is the greatest thing ever to happen to Earth."

"**He was pleased," said Fred. "Didn't you hear him as we were leaving? He was asking that bloke from the **_**Daily Prophet **_**if he'd be able to work the fight into his report — said it was all publicity —"**

**But it was a subdued group that headed back to the fireside in the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry, the Weasleys, and all their shopping would be traveling back to the Burrow using Floo powder. They said good-bye to the Grangers, who were leaving the pub for the Muggle street on the other side; Mr. Weasley started to ask them how bus stops worked, but stopped quickly at the look on Mrs. Weasley's face.**

There was a bit of smirking about that.

**Harry took off his glasses and put them safely in his pocket before helping himself to Floo powder. **

"That is a good idea," Albus said, sounding like he'd never thought of that before. He had broken his glasses on more than one occasion using Floo powder.

**It definitely wasn't his favorite way to travel.**

"It does take some getting used to, but it's much quicker than a car," Rose smiled.

"Right, well, that's the end of the chapter," Lily said, setting the book down. "It's getting awfully hot up here," she added, fanning her hand in front of her face.

"We ought to go back outside before Molly tries to corner us again," Teddy agreed, pulling himself to his feet. The others followed suit.


	6. The Whomping Willow

**Chapter 6-The Whomping Willow**

They trooped downstairs and outside in pairs and groups of three to avoid suspicion. Molly watched them from the living room with narrowed eyes.

"Doesn't she have anything better to do?" Fred hissed to James as they passed Molly.

"Apparently not," James hissed back, rolling his eyes.

"If she rats us out, I'll kill her," Fred said as they burst into the warm sunlight and set off at a run for the shed.

Molly watched as Lily and Hugo ran past, dragging Teddy behind them. Lily was giggling as Teddy changed his hair to long and pink and shook it out as if he were a model in one of her mum's magazines. They didn't even notice her, or if they did, they didn't acknowledge her.

Molly supposed she deserved that. If they'd said anything she'd have just accused them or something. It would be easy to follow them right now. The Burrow was not, after all, that big of a place. But Molly remembered the looks her cousins had given her every time she voiced her suspicions. They thought she was just an annoying, know-it-all snitch. Well, she wasn't. She'd show them she wasn't. But if she happened to find out her cousins were doing something they shouldn't be, she was honor-bound to report it.

Molly sighed and looked around the empty room. That was the way she liked it. It was. She didn't need a constant companion like Lily and Hugo or Rose and Al or Fred and James or Teddy and Victoire. She didn't like giggling and whispering like Roxanne and Dominique and even her sister liked to do. It didn't even bug her that her own sister was avoiding her. No, Molly liked being alone.

She was used to it.

"Change your nose to the one like a beak!" Hugo was telling Teddy excitedly as they came round the corner of the shed. "Then you'll look like a parrot!"

Teddy obliged, adding green and blue streaks to his pink hair, and squawking at Hugo and Lily, who collapsed on the ground with laughter. Fred, James, Albus, and Rose began applauding and whistling and Teddy took a bow, grinning as his nose and hair returned to normal.

Scorpius gaped at him.

"You – your – how did you _do_ that?" he stuttered out, ignoring the others' renewed laughter at his awe.

Teddy grinned wider. "I'm a metamorphmargious," he said proudly. Then he screwed up his face and a second later he bore a remarkable resemblance to Scorpius with white-blonde hair, cool, gray eyes, and a more pointed face. He could have been Scorpius's older brother. "I can change my appearance at will."

"Wicked," Scorpius breathed as Teddy's features returned to normal and his hair went back to his favorite turquoise.

"Right, well, as awesome as I am," Teddy said, chuckling a little as Scorpius turned slightly pink, "I reckon we should get back to this book or we won't finish before Scorp has to leave and my training starts up again."

"I want to read," Fred said suddenly, lunging for the book Rose had just pulled out of her beaded bag and sending the pair of them toppling into the bushes behind her.

"Fred!" Rose complained, whacking him over the head with her bag. "Do you have to be so _exuberant_?"

"Course I do," Fred said indignantly. "Couldn't just be _uberant _could I? You've got to have those ex-'s in there."

"Ex-'s are very important," James added solemnly. "Without them you'd just be 'citeable and 'travagant and other boring ex-less words."

Rose huffed impatiently as she straightened up, bits of leaf in her bushy red hair, and handed the book to Fred, who snatched with a look of glee.

"Right, what chapter were we on? – oh, there's a bookmark here, good."

**Chapter five The Whomping Willow **

"Excellent!" Fred and James chorused together.

"That's a right good tree, that is," Fred said.

"Best tree at Hogwarts," James agreed.

"Yeah, for you," Albus muttered, rubbing subconsciously at his shoulder where the tree had clipped him during his first week, right _before _his ever-caring big brother had warned him about it.

**The end of the summer vacation came too quickly for Harry's liking. **

"It always does," James sighed, shaking his head.

"Unless you're the one going to Hogwarts for the first time," Lily added.

"Still got another year, Lils," James reminded her.

Lily deflated a bit at the prospect.

**He was looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts, but his month at the Burrow had been the happiest of his life. **

Teddy smiled sadly at the book. The Burrow was wonderful, but just being there shouldn't have been the happiest time of Harry's life.

Hugo, Lily, and even Albus had similar expressions. Hugo looked fondly across the chicken-dotted lawn and was glad his uncle had been happy here. Lily was glad her father had finally found a place outside of school where he could be really happy. Albus was trying to figure it all out. He kept wondering why they had a Christmas card signed by Dudley and his family on their sideboard, but he was glad his dad had people who really cared about him finally.

**It was difficult not to feel jealous of Ron **

Teddy smiled a little. He could relate to that. He had often been jealous of all the Weasleys and especially the Potters when he was little. They all had proper families. But then he realized that those were his families, too, and he'd stopped being jealous.

**when he thought of the Dursleys and the sort of welcome he could expect next time he turned up on Privet Drive.**

The mood darkened at the prospect of Harry having to go back to the people who had imprisoned him in his own room.

**On their last evening, Mrs. Weasley conjured up a sumptuous dinner that included all of Harry's favorite things, ending with a mouthwatering treacle pudding. Fred and George rounded off the evening with a display of Filibuster fireworks; they filled the kitchen with red and blue stars that bounced from ceiling to wall**

"Family tradition, then?" Scorpius asked Rose and Albus quietly.

"Yeah, we celebrate the start and end of summer vacation with fireworks every year," Rose told him with a sad smile as she realized who had started the tradition and why her uncle George kept it up no matter what.

**for at least half an hour. Then it was time for a last mug of hot chocolate and bed.**

**It took a long while to get started next morning. **

"Always does," James grinned, thinking about his house the first day of term. How he loved chaos.

**They were up at dawn, but somehow they still seemed to have a great deal to do. Mrs. Weasley dashed about in a bad mood looking for spare socks**

**and quills; people kept colliding on the stairs, half-dressed with bits of toast in their hands; and Mr. Weasley nearly broke his neck, tripping over a stray chicken as he crossed the yard carrying Ginny's trunk to the car.**

**Harry couldn't see how eight people, six large trunks, two owls, and a rat were going to fit into one small Ford Anglia. **

"Yeah, I think the rat is just a bit too big to take along," Fred said, grinning.

"Leave him out and they'll all be quite comfortable," James added.

**He had reckoned, of course, without the special features that Mr. Weasley had added.**

"Come on, Harry, Granddad's got it covered," Hugo beamed.

"That car is amazing!" James said, getting excited again. "I really want to know what happened to it…"

"Probably just broke down," Teddy said reasonably. "It was old then, and that was twenty-five years ago."

James looked extremely disappointed.

"**Not a word to Molly," he whispered to Harry as he opened the trunk and showed him how it had been magically expanded so that the luggage fitted easily.**

**When at last they were all in the car, Mrs. Weasley glanced into the back seat, where Harry, Ron, Fred, George, and Percy were all sitting comfortably side by side, and said, "Muggles **_**do **_**know more than we give them credit for, don't they?" **

"Well, they do, actually," Rose said above Fred and James's snickers.

**She and Ginny got into the front seat, which had been stretched so that it resembled a park bench. "I mean, you'd never know it was this roomy from the outside, would you?"**

**Mr. Weasley started up the engine and they trundled out of the yard, Harry turning back for a last look at the house. **

"Won't be a last look," James said knowledgeably. "More like a third or fourth to last look."

**He barely had time to wonder when he'd see it again when they were back **

"What'd I say?" James said smugly.

"You said something?" Albus said, looking at his brother blankly.

James chucked a fistful of grass at his face which Albus blocked, laughing.

**George had forgotten his box of Filibuster fireworks. Five minutes**

**after that, they skidded to a halt in the yard so that Fred could run in for his broomstick. They had almost reached the highway when Ginny shrieked that she'd left her diary. **

Teddy raised an eyebrow and the others (minus Scorpius) exchanged bemused looks. Since when was Ginny the sort to keep a diary? It seemed a very odd thing for their fiery, take-the-initiative mother/aunt/godmother to do. Fred finally shrugged and kept reading. Ginny was, after all, an eleven year old girl. They did weird things you didn't expect and could explain. He ought to know, he lived with one.

**By the time she had clambered back into the car, they were running very late, and tempers were running high. **

**Mr. Weasley glanced at his watch and then at his wife.**

"**Molly, dear —"**

"_**No, **_**Arthur —"**

"**No one would see — this little button here is an Invisibility Booster I installed **

"Granddad, you are my new hero!" James exclaimed upon hearing this news.

"Forget any kind of Christmas or birthday presents for the rest of my life, all I want is for Granddad to trick out a ride for me," Fred grinned.

"That is pretty cool," Albus admitted, grinning at Scorpius across Rose.

Scorpius grinned back, very relieved that his friend was starting to return to normal.

"And the car has claimed two more fans," Rose sighed, dropping her head into her hands to hide her own wide grin.

"The Flying Ford Anglia fan club has officially been created!" James announced.

— **that'd get us up in the air — then we fly above the clouds. We'd be there in ten minutes and no one would be any the wiser —"**

"Come _on _Gran," James begged, looking painfully excited at the idea of hearing about the car flying again.

"**I said **_**no, **_**Arthur, not in broad daylight —"**

There was a loud groan of disappointment from the Flying Ford Anglia fan club.

**They reached King's Cross at a quarter to eleven. **

"That is cutting it close," Scorpius commented.

**Mr. Weasley dashed across the road to get trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried into the station.**

**Harry had caught the Hogwarts Express the previous year. The tricky part was getting onto platform nine and three-quarters, which wasn't visible to the Muggle eye. What you had to do was walk through the solid barrier dividing platforms nine and ten. It didn't hurt, **

"Why would it hurt?" Hugo questioned.

Rose rolled her eyes at him. "Walking through a _solid barrier _doesn't exactly sound painless if you haven't been doing it all your life and you aren't used to magic. These books were written for muggles, remember?"

"Right," Hugo said looking a bit embarrassed.

**but it had to be done carefully so that none of the Muggles noticed you vanishing.**

"**Percy first," said Mrs. Weasley, looking nervously at the clock overhead, which showed they had only five minutes to disappear casually through the barrier.**

**Percy strode briskly forward and vanished. Mr. Weasley went next; Fred and George followed.**

"**I'll take Ginny and you two come right after us," Mrs. Weasley told Harry and Ron, grabbing Ginny's hand and setting off. In the blink of an eye they were gone.**

"**Let's go together, we've only got a minute," Ron said to Harry. Harry made sure that Hedwig's cage was safely wedged on top of his trunk and wheeled his trolley around to face the barrier. He felt perfectly confident;**

Albus felt the beginnings of apprehension form in his stomach; the moment you started getting to confident, things liked to make a fool out of you. But he couldn't see how anything could go wrong going through the barrier…

**this wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as using Floo powder. Both of them bent low over the handles of their trolleys and walked purposefully toward the barrier, gathering speed. A few feet away from it, they broke into a run and —**

Albus closed his eyes, crossing his fingers that nothing went wrong.

**CRASH.**

As the others jumped at Fred's loud voice and exchanged curious looks, Albus opened his eyes and sighed resignedly.

"What happened?" Hugo asked, confusedly.

"They didn't… crash into the barrier?" Teddy asked incredulously.

"Looks like it," Fred said, just as incredulous.

"How's that possible?" Rose questioned.

Teddy shook his head, but even as he did so, something Ron had once said to him just before his first time to Hogwarts shook itself loose from the back of his mind. He'd been asking about the barrier (having never been to Kings' Cross before), and Ron had clapped him on the back and said, "Crazy, life-saving house-elves aside, getting on the platform's the easy part."

It seemed an odd comment, but then again, Ron was always making odd comments, so he hadn't thought much about it. Until now.

**Both trolleys hit the barrier and bounced backward; Ron's trunk fell off with a loud thump, Harry was knocked off his feet, and Hedwig's cage bounced onto the shiny floor, and she rolled away, shrieking indignantly; people all around them stared and a guard nearby yelled, "What in blazes d'you think you're doing?"**

Everyone winced.

"That most definitely could have gone better," James muttered.

"**Lost control of the trolley," Harry gasped, clutching his ribs as he got up. Ron ran to pick up Hedwig, who was causing such a scene that there was a lot of muttering about cruelty to animals from the surrounding crowd.**

"**Why can't we get through?" Harry hissed to Ron.**

"**I dunno —"**

**Ron looked wildly around. A dozen curious people were still watching them.**

"**We're going to miss the train," Ron whispered. "I don't understand why the gateway's sealed itself —"**

"Nor do we," Hugo said, looking bewilderedly at the book

**Harry looked up at the giant clock with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ten seconds . . . nine seconds . . . **

**He wheeled his trolley forward cautiously until it was right against the barrier and pushed with all his might. The metal remained solid.**

**Three seconds . . . two seconds . . . one second . . .**

"**It's gone," said Ron, sounding stunned. "The train's left. **

"What are they going to do?" Hugo asked, wide-eyed, turning to Teddy.

"Wait for your grandparents, I suppose," Teddy said sensibly.

**What if Mum and Dad can't get back through to us? **

**Everyone turned to look back at Teddy. **

"**If that happens, I dunno," he said, shrugging. "I guess they could send Hedwig to someone, but that would take a while." **

**Hugo bit his lip nervously. **

**Have you got any Muggle money?"**

**Harry gave a hollow laugh. "The Dursleys haven't given me pocket money for about six years."**

"They gave him pocket money at all?" Fred said skeptically.

"A sign of the Apocalypse!" James shouted, clutching at his face.

**Ron pressed his ear to the cold barrier.**

"**Can't hear a thing," he said tensely. "What're we going to do? I don't know how long it'll take Mum and Dad to get back to us."**

**They looked around. People were still watching them, mainly because of Hedwig's continuing screeches.**

"**I think we'd better go and wait by the car," said Harry. "We're attracting too much atten —"**

"**Harry!" said Ron, his eyes gleaming. "The car!"**

"They are _not _going to do what I think they are," Rose said faintly as Fred and James exchanged wile smirks.

"Oh, I hope so," James said. "If Dad flies a car to school, I'll forget all his passed treasons to Marauder-descendants code."

"**What about it?"**

"**We can fly the car to Hogwarts!"**

"Oh, just brilliant!" Rose sighed in frustration. "Don't even wait five minutes to see if Gran and Granddad _do _come back out. Just steal their car and fly off to Hogwarts!"

"Excellent!" Fred and James exclaimed together.

"**But I thought —"**

"**We're stuck, right? And we've got to get to school, haven't we? And even underage wizards are allowed to use magic if it's a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy —"**

"Very official," Teddy snorted.

"**But your mum and dad . . ." said Harry, pushing against the barrier again in the vain hope that it would give way. "How will they get home?"**

"Dad!" James complained. "Stop finding problems with this plan!"

"Yeah, think like Uncle Ron!" Fred added.

"**They don't need the car!" said Ron impatiently. "They know how to Apparate! You know, just vanish and reappear at home! They only bother with Floo powder and the car because we're all underage and we're not allowed to Apparate yet. . . ."**

**Harry's feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement.**

Rose buried her face in her hands again as the boys let out whoops.

"**Can you fly it?"**

"No," said Rose.

"**No problem," said Ron, **

Rose rolled her eyes skyward, palming her forehead.

**wheeling his trolley around to face the exit. "C'mon, let's go. If we hurry we'll be able to follow the Hogwarts Express —"**

**And they marched off through the crowd of curious Muggles, out of the station and back onto the side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked.**

**Ron unlocked the cavernous trunk with a series of taps from his wand. They heaved their luggage back in, put Hedwig on the back seat, and got into the front.**

Fred and James were practically vibrating with excitement by now.

"**Check that no one's watching," said Ron, starting the ignition with another tap of his wand. Harry stuck his head out of the window: Traffic was rumbling along the main road ahead, but their street was empty.**

"**Okay," he said.**

**Ron pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished — and so did they. Harry could feel the seat vibrating beneath him, hear the engine, feel his hands on his knees and his glasses on his nose, but for all he could see, he had become a pair of eyeballs, floating a few feet above the ground in a dingy street full of parked cars.**

"I think your eyes disappeared too, Dad," Lily said, giggling while Fred and James grinned crazily in anticipation.

"You do realize they're going to be in _so _much trouble when they caught," Rose said pointedly to the boys.

"Who says they'll get caught?" James asked.

Rose rolled her eyes again. "They're _flying a car to Hogwarts_! How could they _not _get caught!"

"You're no fun, Rosie," Fred complained.

"I'm plenty of fun when not dealing with illegal, dangerous, and very _very _stupid ideas," Rose shot back, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, she's fine if it's just one of the three, but if it's all of them, Rosie's out," Albus smirked.

"Stop calling me Rosie!" Rose snapped, because she knew full-well that if she denied Al's statement, he'd be able to come up with incriminating examples.

"**Let's go," said Ron's voice from his right.**

**And the ground and the dirty buildings on either side fell away, dropping out of sight as the car rose; in seconds, the whole of London lay, smoky and glittering, below them. **

**Then there was a popping noise and the car, Harry, and Ron reappeared.**

"Uh-oh," James said.

"**Uh-oh," said Ron, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. "It's faulty —"**

"Now you mention it!" Rose exclaimed in exasperation.

**Both of them pummeled it. The car vanished. Then it flickered back again.**

"**Hold on!" Ron yelled, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator, they shot straight into the low, woolly clouds and everything turned dull and foggy.**

"**Now what?" said Harry, blinking at the solid mass of cloud pressing in on them from all sides.**

"**We need to see the train to know what direction to go in," said Ron.**

"**Dip back down again — quickly —"**

**They dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in their seats, squinting at the ground.**

"**I can see it!" Harry yelled. "Right ahead — there!"**

"And that, children, is why you should always bring a seeker with you if you steal a flying car to get to school," James said.

**The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below them like a scarlet snake.**

"**Due north," said Ron, checking the compass on the dashboard. "Okay, we'll just have to check on it every half hour or so — hold on —"**

**And they shot up through the clouds. A minute later, they burst out into a blaze of sunlight.**

**It was a different world. The wheels of the car skimmed the sea of fluffy cloud, the sky a bright, endless blue under the blinding white sun.**

"That really does sound cool," Lily said a little enviously.

"Okay, aside from all the weight-of-the-world, life-or-death stuff, Dad really did a lot of cool things," Albus said.

"**All we've got to worry about now are airplanes," said Ron.**

**They looked at each other and started to laugh; for a long time, they couldn't stop.**

**It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, was surely the only way to travel — past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment, and the prospect of seeing Fred's and George's jealous faces **

"Oh, they'll be green with envy!" Fred said happily. "This is the sort of thing they'd love to do!"

"They're enough of a Hogwarts legend without adding this to it," James said proudly. "Dad and Ron can have this."

"You know it's kind of funny," Fred said suddenly. "You're dad and Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione did at least half as many crazy things as my Dad and Uncle Fred did – and they did them on a grander scale which basically makes it equal, but nobody really remembers the details of their crazy stuff. I mean, everybody know how they saved the world and all that, but I reckon if they were just ordinary kids I reckon they'd be even more legendary at Hogwarts than they are now."

The others looked at each other thoughtfully.

**when they landed smoothly and spectacularly on the sweeping lawn in front of Hogwarts castle.**

Albus once again got that trickle of apprehension. Of course this plan spelled disaster from the beginning, even he could see that, but expecting such a smooth landing meant it would be all the more destructive.

**They made regular checks on the train as they flew farther and farther north, each dip beneath the clouds showing them a different view. London was soon far behind them, replaced by neat green fields that gave way in turn to wide, purplish moors, a great city alive with cars like multicolored ants, villages with tiny toy churches.**

**Several uneventful hours later, however, Harry had to admit that some of the fun was wearing off. The toffees had made them extremely thirsty and they had nothing to drink. **

"Wimps," Fred muttered and James punched his arm.

**He and Ron had pulled off their sweaters, but Harry's T-shirt was sticking to the back of his seat and his glasses kept sliding down to the end of his**

**sweaty nose. He had stopped noticing the fantastic cloud shapes now and was thinking longingly of the train miles below, where you could buy ice-cold pumpkin juice from a trolley pushed by a plump witch. **_**Why **_**hadn't they been able to get onto platform nine and three-quarters?**

"Yes, what was that about?" Lily asked, looking around at all of them.

They just shrugged at her. Teddy was trying to figure out what Ron's comment meant, but he had no idea. Did he mean Dobby, perhaps? Dobby was the only crazy, life-saving house-elf he knew about, and he had already tried to stop Harry from getting to school. But why? Ergh, he didn't know.

No wonder Harry and Ron were such good Aurors. They'd been solving cases since they were eleven.

"**Can't be much further, can it?" croaked Ron, hours later still, as the sun started to sink into their floor of cloud, staining it a deep pink. "Ready for another check on the train?"**

**It was still right below them, winding its way past a snowcapped mountain. It was much darker beneath the canopy of clouds.**

**Ron put his foot on the accelerator and drove them upward again, but as he did so, the engine began to whine.**

They all exchanged worried looks. That didn't sound good. Albus crossed his fingers again and hoped nothing too terrible happened.

**Harry and Ron exchanged nervous glances.**

"**It's probably just tired," said Ron. "It's never been this far before. . . ."**

"Well, tell it it can rest once you get to Hogwarts," James told the book. He was still hopeful that his dream car was still around somewhere and not crumpled around a tree somewhere. That was when he remembered the title of the chapter and groaned inwardly, hope fading even more.

**And they both pretended not to notice the whining growing louder and louder as the sky became steadily darker. **

"Ignore it and maybe it'll go away," Rose said dryly. "That's always the best policy when dealing with whining flying cars that might fall out of the sky at any moment."

"Well, what else are they supposed to do? It's not like they can pull over and check under the hood," James pointed out.

**Stars were blossoming in the blackness. Harry pulled his sweater back on, trying to ignore the way the windshield wipers were now waving feebly, as though in protest.**

"Poor car," Lily said sympathetically.

Hugo looked at her oddly.

"**Not far," said Ron, more to the car than to Harry, "not far now," and he patted the dashboard nervously.**

**When they flew back beneath the clouds a little while later, they had to squint through the darkness for a landmark they knew.**

"_**There**_**!" Harry shouted, making Ron and Hedwig jump. "Straight ahead!"**

**Silhouetted on the dark horizon, high on the cliff over the lake, stood the many turrets and towers of Hogwarts castle.**

**But the car had begun to shudder and was losing speed.**

Everyone looked worried now, especially James and Albus who were pretty sure they knew what was coming.

"**Come on," Ron said cajolingly, giving the steering wheel a little shake, "nearly there, come on —"**

"Come on," Lily said, adding to her uncle's cajoling.

**The engine groaned. Narrow jets of steam were issuing from under the hood. **

"Not good," James muttered.

"Ya think?" Rose hissed, looking furious. "I _told _you this was a bad idea."

"And what was I supposed to do?" James snapped back. "Go back in time and deliver your message to them?"

Rose scowled.

**Harry found himself gripping the edges of his seat very hard as they flew toward the lake.**

**The car gave a nasty wobble. Glancing out of his window, Harry saw the smooth, black, glassy surface of the water, a mile below. Ron's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The car wobbled again.**

They were all leaning forward, looking at the book with wide eyes.

"**Come **_**on,**_**" Ron muttered.**

**They were over the lake — the castle was right ahead — Ron put his foot down.**

**There was a loud clunk, a splutter, and the engine died completely.**

There was a collective gasp. Rose clapped her hands over her mouth and Lily shrieked out loud.

"What happened, what happened!" Hugo said frantically.

Fred turned the page so furiously he nearly ripped it out.

"**Uh-oh," said Ron, into the silence.**

"You think!" Rose shrieked, slightly hysterically.

"It's okay, Rosie," Albus said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You know they're fine."

"_Now! _And besides, that's not the point! How could they do something _so _stupid!" Rose snapped.

**The nose of the car dropped. They were falling, gathering speed, heading straight for the solid castle wall.**

"No!" Lily cried, grabbing Hugo's hand and nearly crushing his fingers she held on so tight.

"_**Noooooo**_**!" Ron yelled, swinging the steering wheel around; they missed the dark stone wall by inches as the car turned in a great arc, soaring over the dark greenhouses, then the vegetable patch, and then out over the black lawns, losing altitude all the time.**

**Ron let go of the steering wheel completely and pulled his wand out of his back pocket —**

"**STOP! STOP!" he yelled, whacking the dashboard and the windshield, **

"That's not going to do anything!" Teddy groaned. "They'd need to use Wingadium Leviosa."

**but they were still plummeting, the ground flying up toward them —**

"**WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!" Harry bellowed, lunging**

**for the steering wheel, **

There was a collective groan as everyone who had forgotten about the chapter title realized what it meant. Rose buried her face in her arms.

**but too late —**

**CRUNCH.**

Everyone winced. This was not going to end well.

"Guess I know what happened to the car now," James said faintly.

**With an earsplitting bang of metal on wood, they hit the thick tree trunk and dropped to the ground with a heavy jolt. Steam was billowing from under the crumpled hood; Hedwig was shrieking in terror; a golf-ball-sized lump was throbbing on Harry's head where he had hit the windshield; and to his right, Ron let out a low, despairing groan.**

Hugo pales and Rose went oddly still. Sure, their dad was okay, but that didn't mean he couldn't get hurt. Of course, if he ended up in the Hospital wing for a few days, Rose rather thought he deserved it.

"**Are you okay?" Harry said urgently.**

"**My wand," said Ron, in a shaky voice. "Look at my wand —"**

**It had snapped, almost in two; the tip was dangling limply, held on by a few splinters.**

Rose jerked her head up to gape in horror at the book. Similar expressions were spreading across everyone else's faces.

"He snapped his wand?" Scorpius asked, horrorstruck.

"Gran's gonna kill him!" James exclaimed.

"I don't believe it," Fred mumbled before he kept reading.

**Harry opened his mouth to say he was sure they'd be able to mend it up at the school, **

"No, they won't," Rose said hollowly.

"You can't fix broken wands?" Lily asked.

"Nope," Teddy answered, remembering something Hermione had once explained to him. "There's no way… except really, really rare and powerful magic. I don't even know what it is, but Hermione reckons it's near impossible to find."

**but he never even got started. At that very moment, something hit his side of the car with the force of acharging bull, **

"And enters the Whomping Willow," James said with a dramatic flourish.

**sending him lurching sideways into Ron, just as an equally heavy blow hit the roof.**

"**What's happen — ?"**

**Ron gasped, staring through the windshield, and Harry looked around just in time to see a branch as thick as a python smash into it. The tree they had hit was attacking them. Its trunk was bent almost double, and its gnarled boughs were pummeling every inch of the car it could reach.**

"**Aaargh!" said Ron as another twisted limb punched a large dent into his door; the windshield was now trembling under a hail of blows from knuckle-like twigs and a branch as thick as a battering ram was pounding furiously on the roof, which seemed to be caving —**

"Get out, get out!" Rose said frantically. "That tree will pummel you to death!"

"How in the name of Merlin did they survive?" Teddy asked, a little awed. "I mean, if they can even get out of the car by this point, the tree'll bash _them_."

Lily squeaked and tightened her grip on Hugo's hand, which was starting to turn purple.

"**Run for it!" Ron shouted, throwing his full weight against his door, but next second he had been knocked backward into Harry's lap by a vicious uppercut from another branch.**

"**We're done for!" he moaned as the ceiling sagged, but suddenly the floor of the car was vibrating — the engine had restarted.**

"It's alive!" James cheered ecstatically.

"Get out of there! Reverse!" Rose nearly screamed at the book.

"_**Reverse**_**!" Harry yelled, and the car shot backward; the tree was still trying to hit them; they could hear its roots creaking as it almost ripped itself up, lashing out at them as they sped out of reach.**

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"If I wasn't worried about getting grounded for reading these books, I'd kill them for doing this," Rose seethed. "Honestly! How could they think this was a good idea?"

"Because they're twelve-year-old boys," Teddy supplied, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement.

"You two wouldn't do something like this, would you?" She snapped, rounding on her two best friends.

"Oh, no! 'course not!"

"Us? Never!"

Rose rolled her eyes at their innocent expressions. "Thank god there aren't any flying cars around," she muttered.

"**That," panted Ron, "was close. **

"You can say that again," Lily mumbled, letting go of Hugo's hand finally.

"That was close," Fred and James repeated immediately.

Lily rolled her eyes at them.

**Well done, car —"**

**The car, however, had reached the end of its tether. **

"What's that supposed to mean?" Scorpius said confusedly as Hugo said, "I don't blame it."

**With two sharp clunks, the doors flew open and Harry felt his seat tip sideways: Next thing he knew he was sprawled on the damp ground. Loud thuds told him that the car was ejecting their luggage from the trunk; Hedwig's cage flew through the air and burst open; she rose out of it with an angry screech and sped off toward the castle without a backward look. Then, dented, scratched, and steaming, the car rumbled off into the darkness, its rear lights blazing angrily.**

"Wait, it just sped off? No one driving at all? Into the Hogwarts grounds?" James asked incredulously.

"It kicked them out, too," Lily pointed out.

"They deserve worse than that," Rose muttered.

A grin was slowly growing on James's face. "The car wasn't completely destroyed by the tree!"

"Don't get your hopes up, James," Teddy warned, smiling slightly. "It probably didn't make it far."

"Hang on," Hugo said suddenly. "Dad told me a story once about a rogue Ford Anglia that ran around the Forbidden Forest! Errol recruited it to spy on things going on in the forest because they were old pals. 'Course that was just a story, but maybe it came from something real. You don't think –"

"The car's in the forest!" James exclaimed. "Do you think it could still be there?"

"I seriously doubt the car really went wild in the forest," Teddy said, seeing where this might lead. "And you are, under no conditions, to lead an expedition into the forest to search for it or its remains."

James sagged, looking very disappointed once more.

"**Come back!" Ron yelled after it, brandishing his broken wand. "Dad'll kill me!"**

"Yeah, after this I'm surprised he's still alive," Albus said, glancing sideways at his still-fuming cousin.

"Or at the very least not still locked up in the attic," Hugo added.

"Oh, he's gonna pay for it someway," Teddy said wisely. He himself was no stranger to howlers.

**But the car disappeared from view with one last snort from its exhaust.**

"**Can you **_**believe **_**our luck?" said Ron miserably, bending down to pick up Scabbers. "Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back."**

"Well, that is Dad's luck, isn't it?" James smirked.

**He glanced over his shoulder at the ancient tree, which was still flailing its branches threateningly.**

"**Come on," said Harry wearily, "we'd better get up to the school. . . ."**

**It wasn't at all the triumphant arrival they had pictured. **

Albus gave a very quiet snort. Just like he said…

**Stiff, cold, and bruised, they seized the ends of their trunks and began**

**dragging them up the grassy slope, toward the great oak front doors.**

"**I think the feast's already started," said Ron, dropping his trunk at the foot of the front steps and crossing quietly to look through a brightly lit window. **

"**Hey — Harry — come and look — it's the Sorting!"**

"Well, they'll have quite the entrance at least," Scorpius said dryly.

**Harry hurried over and, together, he and Ron peered in at the Great Hall.**

**Innumerable candles were hovering in midair over four long, crowded tables, making the golden plates and goblets sparkle. Overhead, the bewitched ceiling, which always mirrored the sky outside, sparkled with stars.**

Again, Lily and Hugo were staring at the book hungrily, wishing they could go to Hogwarts and see all of this for themselves.

**Through the forest of pointed black Hogwarts hats, Harry saw a long line of scared-looking first years filing into the Hall. Ginny was among them, easily visible because of her vivid Weasley hair. Meanwhile, Professor McGonagall, a bespectacled witch with her hair in a tight bun, was placing the famous Hogwarts Sorting Hat on a stool before the newcomers.**

**Every year, this aged old hat, patched, frayed, and dirty, sorted new students into the four Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin). Harry well remembered putting it on, exactly one year ago, and waiting, petrified, for its decision as it muttered aloud in his ear. For a few horrible seconds he had feared that the hat was going to put him in Slytherin, the House that had turned out more Dark witches and wizards than any other **

Scorpius looked down at his hands. He wished more than ever that he'd had the guts to refuse to be sorted into Slytherin. He supposed that was the reason he would never be a Gryffindor.

Albus caught the look on his friend's face and frowned.

"You don't have to be brave to be a good person," he said very quietly.

Scorpius smiled very slightly in appreciation, but at the same time thought that all the best people he knew were brave.

— **but he had ended up in Gryffindor, along with Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Weasleys. Last term, Harry and Ron had helped Gryffindor win the House Championship, **

"So did Hermione and Neville," Lily pointed out.

**Beating Slytherin for the first time in seven years.**

**A very small, mousy-haired boy had been called forward to place the hat on his head. **

"Kinda sounds like a Creevey," Rose said thoughtfully. "Collin in our year looks like that. Do you think it's his dad? Denis? The one Dad and Harry work with?"

"Maybe," Albus said frowning. He thought Denis was a bit younger than his parents, but then again he never really paid much attention to how old all his parents' friends were.

**Harry's eyes wandered past him to where Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, sat watching the Sorting from the staff table, his long silver beard and half-moon glasses shining brightly in the candlelight. Several seats along, Harry saw Gilderoy Lockhart, dressed in robes of aquamarine. And there at the end was Hagrid, huge and hairy, drinking deeply from his goblet.**

"**Hang on . . ." Harry muttered to Ron. "There's an empty chair at the staff table. . . . Where's Snape?"**

**Professor Severus Snape was Harry's least favorite teacher. **

Albus looked down at his hands. _Why _then, did his parents name him after the man?

**Harry also happened to be Snape's least favorite student. Cruel, sarcastic,**

**and disliked by everybody except the students from his own House**

**(Slytherin), **

"Boy, that's a great way to sell his personality," James said buoyantly. "Maybe Mum and Dad hoped you'd turn out like him," he added to Albus as if he couldn't resist.

"James? Shut up," Rose snapped at him.

As Fred began to read, she nudged Albus in the ribs and gave him a reassuring smile when he looked up miserably.

**Snape taught Potions.**

"**Maybe he's ill!" said Ron hopefully.**

"**Maybe he's **_**left,**_**" said Harry, "because he missed out on the Defense Against the Dark Arts job **_**again**_**!"**

"**Or he might have been **_**sacked **_**!" said Ron enthusiastically. "I mean, everyone hates him —"**

"**Or maybe," said a very cold voice right behind them, **

Nearly everyone groaned again. They seemed to be doing that a lot in this chapter.

Teddy smacked his forehead, shaking his head.

"They just can't get a break, can they?" he said.

James and Fred exchanged a look. They would have found this extremely funny if they weren't afraid of what terrors awaited their father/uncles.

"**he's waiting to hear why you two didn't arrive on the school train."**

**Harry spun around. There, his black robes rippling in a cold breeze, stood Severus Snape. He was a thin man with sallow skin, a hooked nose, and greasy, shoulder-length black hair, and at this moment, he was smiling in a way that told Harry he and Ron were in very deep trouble.**

James shuddered. "This doesn't look good at all."

"Well, what did they expect?" Rose asked, only half-heartedly though. No matter how furious she was with her father and uncle, she doubted even they deserved whatever Snape was about to saddle them with.

"**Follow me," said Snape.**

**Not daring even to look at each other, Harry and Ron followed Snape up the steps into the vast, echoing entrance hall, which was lit with flaming torches. A delicious smell of food was wafting from the Great Hall, but Snape led them away from the warmth and light, down a narrow stone staircase that led into the dungeons.**

James moaned a little. "That's just cruel, leading them away from the delicious smell of the feast."

"**In!" he said, opening a door halfway down the cold passageway and pointing.**

**They entered Snape's office, shivering. The shadowy walls were lined with shelves of large glass jars, in which floated all manner of revolting things Harry didn't really want to know the name of at the moment. The fireplace was dark and empty. **

Hugo shivered.

"Sounds creepy," he whispered.

**Snape closed the door and turned to look at them.**

"**So," he said softly, "the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry Potter and his faithful sidekick, Weasley. Wanted to arrive with a **_**bang, **_**did we, boys?"**

"**No, sir, it was the barrier at King's Cross, it —"**

"**Silence!" said Snape coldly. "What have you done with the car?"**

"Shit, he knows!" James said hoarsely.

"How?" Hugo asked, horrified.

The others just shook their heads and stared at Fred to continue.

**Ron gulped. This wasn't the first time Snape had given Harry the impression of being able to read minds. But a moment later, he understood, as Snape unrolled today's issue of the **_**Evening Prophet.**_

"**You were seen," he hissed, **

Albus blanched, Rose grew redder, Teddy gaped in horror, and Fred read faster.

**showing them the headline: **_**FLYING FORD ANGLIA MYSTIFIES MUGGLES. **_**He began to readaloud: "Two Muggles in London, convinced they saw an old carflying over the Post Office tower . . . at noon in Norfolk, Bayliss, while hanging out her washing . . . Mr. Angus Fleet,of Peebles, reported to police . . . Six or seven Muggles in all. I believe**_** your **_**father works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office?"**

"Oh no, Granddad!" Hugo said, wringing his hands in distress.

"He could get in a lot of trouble for this," Teddy muttered, worriedly.

**he said, looking up at Ron and smiling still more nastily. "Dear, dear . . . his own son . . ."**

**Harry felt as though he'd just been walloped in the stomach by one of the mad tree's larger branches. If anyone found out Mr. Weasley had bewitched the car . . . he hadn't thought of that. . . .**

"**I noticed, in my search of the park, that considerable damage seems to have been done to a very valuable Whomping Willow," Snape went on.**

"**That tree did more damage to **_**us **_**than we —" Ron blurted out.**

"_**Silence**_**!" snapped Snape again. "Most unfortunately, you are not in my House and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. **

"Thank the lord," Rose mumbled. "Although I don't know how much better off they are with McGonagall."

"Dumbledore'll keep things fair," Teddy said, though he sounded a little nervous all the same.

**I shall go and fetch the people who **_**do **_**have that happy power. You will wait here."**

**Harry and Ron stared at each other, white-faced. Harry didn't feel hungry anymore. He now felt extremely sick. He tried not to look at a large, slimy something suspended in green liquid on a shelf behind Snape's desk. If Snape had gone to fetch Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor House, they were hardly any better off. She might be fairer than Snape, but she was still extremely strict.**

**Ten minutes later, Snape returned, and sure enough it was Professor McGonagall who accompanied him. Harry had seen Professor McGonagall angry on several occasions, **

James looked proud about this fact.

**but either he had forgotten just how thin her mouth could go, or he had never seen her this angry before. She raised her wand the moment she entered;**

"Duck!" Fred shouted at the book in his hands.

Rose rolled her eyes.

**Harry and Ron both flinched, but she merely pointed it at the empty fireplace, where flames suddenly erupted.**

"**Sit," she said, and they both backed into chairs by the fire. "Explain," she said, her glasses glinting ominously.**

**Ron launched into the story, starting with the barrier at the station refusing to let them through.**

"— **so we had no choice, Professor, we couldn't get on the train."**

"**Why didn't you send us a letter by owl? I believe **_**you **_**have an owl?" Professor McGonagall said coldly to Harry.**

"See? Definitely _not _your only choice!" Rose muttered furiously.

**Harry gaped at her. Now she'd said it, that seemed the obvious thing to have done.**

"It always seems that way after someone else points it out later," James sighed.

"**I — I didn't think —"**

"That's obvious," Rose snorted.

"**That," said Professor McGonagall, "is obvious."**

James and Fred cast her wary looks.

**There was a knock on the office door and Snape, now looking happier than ever, **

"Git," James couldn't help but mutter, scowling at the book. This guy was a real piece of work. What had his parents been thinking to name their kid after him?

**opened it. There stood the headmaster, Professor Dumbledore.**

"Good," Fred breathed, a little relieved.

**Harry's whole body went numb. Dumbledore was looking unusually grave. **

"Okay, maybe that's bad then," Fred said uncertainly.

"No, it's good," Teddy said. "He'll get the message across without over-reacting. Er… at least from what I've heard and read about him, that seems like the sort of thing he'll do."

**He stared down his very crooked nose at them, and Harry suddenly found himself wishing he and Ron were still being beaten up by the Whomping Willow.**

"You know, that's how I feel when Dad's really upset with us," James mumbled. "Mum goes ballistic and that's easy to brush off, but Dad… he just seems, well, grave."

"It's a gift," Teddy said, remembering similar feelings on the few occasions Harry had ever been upset with him.

"Hope I have it when I have kids," James said. "Otherwise they won't listen to me at all."

"You've got the Weasley temper," Teddy told him, smiling a bit. "Al probably has that gift though. He used to fix me with this look when he was a baby and I did something he didn't like," Teddy chuckled as Albus flushed a little.

**There was a long silence. Then Dumbledore said, "Please explain why you did this."**

**It would have been better if he had shouted. Harry hated the disappointment in his voice.**

"Yup, that sounds about right," James sighed. He _hated _it when his dad was disappointed in him. It was worse than just about anything else.

"Guess we know where he learned it from," Teddy said to James with a rueful smile.

**For some reason, he was unable to look Dumbledore in the eyes, and spoke instead to his knees. **

Everybody who had ever been on the receiving end of one of Harry's disappointed looks nodded in sympathy.

**He told Dumbledore everything except that Mr. Weasley owned the bewitched car, making it sound as though he and Ron had happened to find a flying car parked outside the station. **

Rose snorted. "Because that's so believable."

"Isn't it?" Fred and James said together, looking at her with wide eyes.

"Just keep reading," she sighed.

**He knew Dumbledore would see through this at once, but Dumbledore asked no questions about the car. When Harry had finished, he merely continued to peer at them through his spectacles.**

"That's the worst," Teddy said miserably. "When he just stares at you like that and even you can't understand how you could be so stupid or whatever."

"**We'll go and get our stuff," said Ron in a hopeless sort of voice.**

"**What are you talking about, Weasley?" barked Professor Mc- Gonagall.**

"**Well, you're expelling us, aren't you?" said Ron.**

**Harry looked quickly at Dumbledore.**

"**Not today, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore. "But I must impress upon both of you the seriousness of what you have done. I will be writing to both your families tonight. I must also warn you that if you do anything like this again, I will have no choice but to expel you."**

"Hm, I wonder what changed," James said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked him.

"Well, they never got expelled, and you don't honestly think that they never did anything like this again?" James said, looking at her.

"Right…"

**Snape looked as though Christmas had been canceled. He cleared his throat and said, "Professor Dumbledore, these boys have flouted the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree — surely acts of this nature —"**

"Oh, shut up Snape," Fred snapped irritably.

"**It will be for Professor McGonagall to decide on these boys' punishments, Severus," said Dumbledore calmly. "They are in her House and are therefore her responsibility." He turned to Professor McGonagall. "I must go back to the feast, Minerva, I've got to give out a few notices. Come, Severus, there's a delicious-looking custard tart I want to sample —"**

Fred and James smirked at each other at the last part, although the thought of what McGonagall was going to do sobered them a bit.

**Snape shot a look of pure venom at Harry and Ron as he allowed himself to be swept out of his office, leaving them alone with Professor McGonagall, who was still eyeing them like a wrathful eagle.**

"**You'd better get along to the hospital wing, Weasley, you're bleeding."**

"**Not much," said Ron, hastily wiping the cut over his eye with his sleeve. **

"**Professor, I wanted to watch my sister being Sorted —"**

"**The Sorting Ceremony is over," said Professor McGonagall. "Your sister is also in Gryffindor."**

"**Oh, good," said Ron.**

"He couldn't really think she'd go anywhere else," Lily said, looking at the book incredulously.

"I dunno, I sometimes think you'll end up in Slytherin," Albus teased his sister.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"**And speaking of Gryffindor —" Professor McGonagall said sharply, but Harry cut in: "Professor, when we took the car, term hadn't started, so — so Gryffindor shouldn't really have points taken from it — should it?" he finished, watching her anxiously.**

"Well, no one can say he doesn't deserve to be in Gryffindor now," Fred whistled. "That took guts."

**Professor McGonagall gave him a piercing look, but he was sure she had almost smiled. Her mouth looked less thin, anyway.**

"**I will not take any points from Gryffindor," she said, and Harry's heart lightened considerably. **

"Wow, now that's impressive!" James said appreciatively. "Talking down an angry Professor McGonagall."

"**But you will both get a detention."**

"Well, they couldn't really get out of that much," Fred conceded sadly.

**It was better than Harry had expected. As for Dumbledore's writing to the Dursleys, that was nothing. Harry knew perfectly well they'd just be disappointed that the Whomping Willow hadn't squashed him flat.**

Albus looked down. That was what really got at him. He couldn't imagine thinking your family really hoped you would just disappear, that they just _didn't care_. It was worse than arguing or screaming at each other. And his dad spent his whole childhood thinking no one gave damn about him… that he wasn't worth anyone to give a damn about. Well, Albus cared, and he was going to make absolutely sure his father knew that.

**Professor McGonagall raised her wand again and pointed it at Snape's desk. A large plate of sandwiches, two silver goblets, and a jug of iced pumpkin juice appeared with a pop.**

"**You will eat in here and then go straight up to your dormitory," she said. "I must also return to the feast."**

**When the door had closed behind her, Ron let out a long, low whistle.**

"**I thought we'd had it," he said, grabbing a sandwich.**

"**So did I," said Harry, taking one, too.**

"**Can you believe our luck, though?" said Ron thickly through a mouthful of chicken and ham. "Fred and George must've flown that car five or six times and no Muggle ever saw **_**them.**_**" **

"Awesome!" Fred grinned. "Dad and Uncle Fred are supreme."

James just rolled his eyes.

**He swallowed and took another huge bite. "**_**Why **_**couldn't we get through**

**the barrier?"**

"Yes, we'd all like to know that," Rose said.

**Harry shrugged. "We'll have to watch our step from now on, though," he said, taking a grateful swig of pumpkin juice. "Wish we could've gone up to the feast. . . ."**

"**She didn't want us showing off," said Ron sagely. "Doesn't want people to think it's clever, arriving by flying car."**

"Won't stop anyone from finding out, 'specially if it was in the paper," James said, a grin spreading across his face at the prospect of the rest of the school's reaction.

**When they had eaten as many sandwiches as they could (the plate kept refilling itself), they rose and left the office, treading the familiar path to Gryffindor Tower. The castle was quiet; it seemed that the feast was over. They walked past muttering portraits and creaking suits of armor, and climbed narrow flights of stone stairs, until at last they reached the passage where the secret entrance to Gryffindor Tower was hidden, behind an oil painting of a very fat woman in a pink silk dress.**

"**Password?" she said as they approached.**

"**Er —" said Harry.**

"Er, yeah, that could be problematic," Scorpius said.

"They'll figure it out," James said, waving his hand airily.

**They didn't know the new year's password, not having met a Gryffindor prefect yet, but help came almost immediately; they heard hurrying feet behind them and turned to see Hermione dashing toward them.**

"Oh, she must have been going spare," Lily said suddenly. "The whole train ride, probably."

"_**There **_**you are! Where have you **_**been**_**? The most **_**ridiculous **_**rumors — someone said you'd been expelled for crashing a flying **_**car **_**—"**

"Well, they haven't been expelled," James said with a smirk.

"**Well, we haven't been expelled," Harry assured her.**

"**You're not telling me you **_**did **_**fly here?" said Hermione, sounding almost as severe as Professor McGonagall.**

"**Skip the lecture," said Ron impatiently, **

"Even though you deserve it," Rose said indignantly.

"**and tell us the new password."**

"**It's 'wattlebird,' " said Hermione impatiently, "but that's not the point —"**

"Too late," James said happily.

"And they're in!" Fred exclaimed.

**Her words were cut short, however, as the portrait of the fat lady swung open and there was a sudden storm of clapping. **

Rose huffed indignantly again.

**It looked as though the whole of Gryffindor House was still awake, packed**

**into the circular common room, standing on the lopsided tables and squashy armchairs, waiting for them to arrive. Arms reached through the portrait hole to pull Harry and Ron inside, leaving Hermione to scramble in after them.**

"**Brilliant!" yelled Lee Jordan. "Inspired! What an entrance! Flying a car right into the Whomping Willow, people'll be talking about that one for years —"**

"You would think, wouldn't you?" James said sadly. "But all anybody remembers Dad for is defeating Voldemort." He gave a long-suffering sigh.

"**Good for you," said a fifth year Harry had never spoken to; someone was patting him on the back as though he'd just won a marathon; Fred and George pushed their way to the front of the crowd and said together, "Why couldn't we've come in the car, eh?" Ron was scarlet in the face, grinning embarrassedly, but Harry could see one person who didn't look happy at all. Percy was visible over the heads of some excited first years, and he seemed to be trying to get near enough to start telling them off. **

"Gotta get out of there fast," Fred advised.

"Those prefects ruin everything," James sighed.

**Harry nudged Ron in the ribs and nodded in Percy's direction. Ron got the point at once.**

"**Got to get upstairs — bit tired," he said, and the two of them started pushing their way toward the door on the other side of the room, which led to a spiral staircase and the dormitories.**

" '**Night," Harry called back to Hermione, who was wearing a scowl just like Percy's.**

Rose was wearing a similar expression.

**They managed to get to the other side of the common room, still having their backs slapped, and gained the peace of the staircase. They hurried up it, right to the top, and at last reached the door of their old dormitory, which now had a sign on it saying second years. They entered the familiar, circular room, with its five four-posters hung with red velvet and its high, narrow windows.**

Scorpius sighed a little, thinking of the cold dungeon dormitories he had to sleep in. He'd much rather be in the tower.

**Their trunks had been brought up for them and stood at the ends of their beds.**

**Ron grinned guiltily at Harry.**

"**I know I shouldn't've enjoyed that or anything, but —"**

"Of course you should have!" James told the book, shaking his head at his uncle's foolishness. "That's the part you _are _supposed to enjoy."

**The dormitory door flew open and in came the other second year Gryffindor boys, Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and Neville Longbottom.**

"_**Unbelievable**_**!" beamed Seamus.**

"**Cool," said Dean.**

"**Amazing," said Neville, awestruck.**

**Harry couldn't help it. He grinned, too.**

"Hopeless, you lot are," Rose sighed, gesturing around at all the grinning boys.

"Oh, come on, Rosie!" Hugo said. "Aside from the detention and getting seen and Granddad's job, that was pretty cool!"

"Aside from _all that_?" Rose said, raising her eyebrows.

"Everything was okay," Albus pointed out. "I mean, Granddad still has his job and everything."

Rose just crossed her arms.

"I'll read next," Teddy offered, holding out a hand for the book.


	7. Gilderoy Lockhart

**Chapter 7-Gilderoy Lockhart**

"I think we'll manage just one more chapter before lunch," Teddy said, glancing at his watch as he flipped to the right page.

"Is it that late already?" Rose asked, glancing at her own watch. "We've only read a couple chapters."

"Well, if _someone_ hadn't taken so long at breakfast," James said, looking at Teddy pointedly, "We would've gotten more read."

Teddy shrugged, grinning at James. "Things to do, people to see. But anyway…"

**Chapter Six Gilderoy Lockhart**

Nearly everyone groaned.

"I can't believe he gets his own chapter," James grumbled.

"Maybe he's not as bad as we think," Scorpius said hopefully. "I mean, maybe he's a fraud and comes off a bit smarmy, but we haven't really seen too much of him for ourselves yet…" he trailed off at the others' incredulous looks.

"Were you paying attention at all during the book shop scene?" James asked.

"Right," Scorpius mumbled, flushing pink.

"Don't mind him," Albus told his friend. "It's just rare that James finds someone more full of himself than he is."

"Watch it," James growled, scowling at his little brother.

Teddy started reading before it could escalate beyond that.

**The next day, however, Harry barely grinned once. **

"Can't blame him," James muttered. "With a chapter named after that git."

"You know Dad doesn't know about chapter titles and stuff?" Lily asked her brother in a loud whisper.

**Things started to go downhill from breakfast in the Great Hall. The four long House tables were laden with tureens of porridge, plates of kippers, mountains of toast, and dishes of eggs and bacon, **

"That doesn't sound too bad to me," Fred said, suddenly wishing lunch would come a bit sooner.

**Beneath the enchanted ceiling (today, a dull, cloudy gray). Harry and Ron sat down at the Gryffindor table next to Hermione, who had her copy of **_**Voyages with Vampires **_**propped open against a milk jug. There was a slight stiffness in the way she said " 'Morning," which told Harry that she was still disapproving of the way they had arrived.**

"As she has a right to be," Rose said, crossing her arms at the reminder.

**Neville Longbottom, on the other hand, greeted them cheerfully.**

"Neville!" everyone cheered (although Scorpius called him 'Professor Longbottom') at the first mention of their parents' good friend and their Herbology professor.

**Neville was a round-faced and accident-prone boy with the worst memory of anyone Harry had ever met.**

"Wonderful description, as always," James grinned.

"It's still so weird to think this is the same cool Herbology professor we know," Scorpius mumbled. He found it hardest to reconcile the clumsy, forgetful, timid boy with one of his favorite professors. Maybe it was easier for the others because they'd know him all their lives and had seen glimpses of this boy in the man they knew, but it was strange for Scorpius.

"**Mail's due any minute — I think Gran's sending a few things I forgot."**

Teddy smiled a little, the sentence reminding him of his own school days.

James, however, frowned a little, something just hitting him. He'd noticed it in the last book, but hadn't really thought about it much. Why had Neville been brought up by his gran? He glanced at Teddy, wondering if it was for the same reasons Teddy had been.

**Harry had only just started his porridge when, sure enough, there was a rushing sound overhead and a hundred or so owls streamed in, circling the hall and dropping letters and packages into the chattering crowd. A big, lumpy package bounced off Neville's head and, a second later, something large and gray fell into Hermione's jug, spraying them all with milk and feathers.**

"_**Errol **_**!" said Ron, pulling the bedraggled owl out by the feet. Errol slumped, unconscious, onto the table, his legs in the air and a damp red envelope in his beak.**

"Crap," Fred and James said together, exchanging a pale glance.

They had each received two howlers. One from a potions "experiment" in their first year that had gone… erm, wrong. Ginny and Angelina's voices had seemed to reverberate around the Great Hall for days afterwards. Fred's second howler had come last year when he'd let his grades slip. He was as brilliant as his father, having spent most of his childhood learning about Charms and Transfiguration by watching his dad work, but he was not the most work-driven student.

James's second howler had come after the Whomping Willow incident last year. His parents had mercifully sent it to his dormitory rather than the Great Hall, so only his dorm mates had to hear his mother's furious tirade about how he was supposed to be looking after his younger brother, not 'using him for his own amusement'. That had stung. James admitted that he hadn't exactly been the most over-protective big brother, but he hadn't been _using _his brother. He and Al might not get along all the time – well, okay, most of the time – but he'd never do that. It might have been only he, Fred and one other boy in their year who heard the lecture that seemed to go on forever, but it was far worse than the first howler. And then his dad had to go and send his own hand-written note that positively dripped with disappointment. That was when he started keeping an eye on his brother on the Marauders' Map, just to make sure… Of course Albus was never to _ever _find out James was keeping an eye out for him.

So neither Fred nor James had very good experiences with red envelopes, and this did not seem to bode well for their uncle.

"**Oh, no —" Ron gasped.**

"**It's all right, he's still alive," said Hermione, prodding Errol gently with the tip of her finger.**

"'course he is," Fred said impatiently. "Uncle Ron's more worried about the letter."

James bit his lip, his mother's low, furious voice ringing in his ears again.

"**It's not that — it's **_**that.**_**"**

**Ron was pointing at the red envelope. It looked quite ordinary to Harry, **

Fred, James, and even Teddy (who had received a howler or two in his seven years at school) laughed darkly.

**but Ron and Neville were both looking at it as though they expected it to explode.**

There was some more dark laughter.

James, for his part, wondered what Neville had ever done to receive a Howler. He might have believed it of his cool teacher or of the war veteran he knew now, but not of this clumsy boy who'd been knocked out cold in his only two fights ever. Not of the boy who brought a _toad _to school with him.

"**What's the matter?" said Harry.**

"**She's — she's sent me a Howler," said Ron faintly.**

"**You'd better open it, Ron," said Neville in a timid whisper. "It'll be worse if you don't. My gran sent me one once, and I ignored it and" — he gulped — "it was horrible."**

"Yeah, my first one set my bed on fire fourth year," Teddy muttered.

"You got howlers?" Lily asked in surprise.

"Sure," Teddy said, shrugging. "Fourth year for skiving off classes" – that had been the year they'd started studying the war – "and seventh year for – other things."

He blushed a little, remembering how McGonagall had found him and Victoire snogging on top of the Astronomy tower at three in the morning. The Howler from his grandmother was less for the detention and more for the situation and especially because Victoire was still underage at the time.

Fred and James were smirking, so Teddy figured it would best to just keep going.

**Harry looked from their petrified faces to the red envelope.**

"**What's a Howler?" he said.**

"So innocent," Fred sighed.

**But Ron's whole attention was fixed on the letter, which had begun to smoke at the corners.**

"He better open it unless he wants a charred breakfast," Teddy said dryly.

"**Open it," Neville urged. "It'll all be over in a few minutes —"**

**Ron stretched out a shaking hand, eased the envelope from Errol's beak, and slit it open. Neville stuffed his fingers in his ears. A split second later, Harry knew why. He thought for a moment it **_**had **_**exploded; a roar of sound filled the huge hall, shaking dust from the ceiling.**

"Gran sure can yell," Albus muttered.

"It's a talent," Fred added, having been on the receiving end of quite a few of his grandmother's shouting rants.

"— _**STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH**_ _**WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —**_**"**

Nearly everyone winced. They hadn't thought of that either.

Rose, on the other hand, looked smug that someone was finally delivering the telling-off she couldn't.

**Mrs. Weasley's yells, a hundred times louder than usual, made the plates and spoons rattle on the table, and echoed deafeningly off the stone walls.**

Fred, James, and Teddy winced again as they imagined how much worse a Howler would be from Mrs. Weasley. Their mothers and grandmother had been bad enough.

**People throughout the hall were swiveling around to see who had received the Howler, and Ron sank so low in his chair that only his crimson forehead could be seen.**

"— _**LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND HARRY COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —**_**"**

**Harry had been wondering when his name was going to crop up. He tried very hard to look as though he couldn't hear the voice that was making his eardrums throb.**

Fred snorted. "Good luck mate. If I couldn't pull that off, you definitely can't."

"— _**ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME.**_**"**

James suddenly smirked.

"What?" Fred asked, looking at him oddly. It wasn't like James to revel in someone else's punishment. That was Molly's gig.

"She must have had to eat her words," he grinned.

"What d'you mean?" Albus asked. The last page was enough to dissuade him from ever causing enough trouble to get a Howler (at least on purpose).

"Well, based on their first year, and just how Dad and Ron and Hermione are in general, you can't honestly expect them to avoid trouble for the next six years? Even hiding it all for six years would be impossible. Therefore, Gran had to eat her words and ignore the next huge-probably-life-saving thing they got up to," James explained triumphantly.

The others looked at each other. That seemed entirely too likely.

"Now if only you'd apply this sort of logic to your transfiguration homework," Rose sighed, shaking her head at James.

**A ringing silence fell. The red envelope, which had dropped from Ron's hand, burst into flames and curled into ashes. Harry and Ron sat stunned, as though a tidal wave had just passed over them. **

"Excellent comparison," Fred murmured. James nodded vigorously.

**A few people laughed and, gradually, a babble of talk broke out again.**

**Hermione closed **_**Voyages with Vampires **_**and looked down at the top of Ron's head.**

"**Well, I don't know what you expected, Ron, but you —"**

"**Don't tell me I deserved it," snapped Ron.**

Rose scowled. "You _did _deserve it. Doesn't he realize how incredibly stupid that was!"

"I'm sure he knows on some level," Teddy placated. "But he's a twelve-year-old boy and they don't like to admit that sort of thing," he added with a half-smile.

Rose only continued to scowl.

**Harry pushed his porridge away. His insides were burning with guilt. **

Rose softened a bit. At least it was working on one of them. She supposed her father probably felt guilty too, but he was too proud to admit it.

James exchanged a look with Fred and rolled his eyes. Of course his father would feel guilty, even when it wasn't his idea. That was just the way his father was.

**Mr. Weasley was facing an inquiry at work. After all Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had done for him over the summer . . .**

**But he had no time to dwell on this; Professor McGonagall was moving along the Gryffindor table, handing out course schedules. Harry took his and saw that they had double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs first.**

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione left the castle together, crossed the vegetable patch, and made for the greenhouses, where the magical plants were kept. At least the Howler had done one good thing: Hermione seemed to think they had now been punished enough and was being perfectly friendly again.**

Teddy laughed a little. Hermione still used that logic when dealing with 'her boys'. He saw it even more now that he was working with all three of them (Auror trainees had to shadow Magical Law Enforcement officials to get a better feel for legislation).

**As they neared the greenhouses they saw the rest of the class standing outside, waiting for Professor Sprout. **

"I nearly forgot Neville's still only a second year," Fred said. "Blimey, it's strange to have someone else teaching Herbology. I know Neville's not that old, but it's like he owns it or something."

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione had only just joined them when she came striding into view across the lawn, accompanied by Gilderoy Lockhart. Professor Sprout's arms were full of bandages, and with another twinge of guilt, Harry spotted the Whomping Willow in the distance, several of its branches now in slings.**

"Poor tree," Lily said sympathetically. "It must really hurt to have a car crash into your branches. What?" she added when she noticed the others looking at her strangely.

"You're feeling sorry for a tree," Hugo told her bluntly, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

**Professor Sprout was a squat little witch who wore a patched hat over her flyaway hair; there was usually a large amount of earth on her clothes and her fingernails would have made Aunt Petunia faint. **

James, Albus, and Lily snickered at each other, thinking of their fussy great aunt.

**Gilderoy Lockhart, however, was immaculate in sweeping robes of turquoise, his golden hair shining under a perfectly positioned turquoise hat with gold trimming.**

"**Oh, hello there!" he called, beaming around at the assembled** **students. "Just been showing Professor Sprout the right way to doctor** **a Whomping Willow! **

They exchanged incredulous looks.

"God this guy is a real prat," James said in a long-suffering voice. "No wonder he only lasted a year."

"Yeah, the entirety of Hogwarts probably united against him with pitch forks and torches if they had to endure this for a whole year," Fred added, looking slightly nauseated by Lockhart.

**But I don't want you running away with** **the idea that I'm better at Herbology than she is! **

"I'm so sure," James snorted, making the others snigger.

**I just happen to** **have met several of these exotic plants on my travels . . ."**

"**Greenhouse three today, chaps!" said Professor Sprout, who was looking distinctly disgruntled, not at all her usual cheerful self. There was a murmur of interest. They had only ever worked in greenhouse one before — greenhouse three housed far more interesting and dangerous plants.**

"Yeah it does," Fred grinned, slapping James a high five.

"What did you two do?" Teddy asked bemusedly.

Fred and James immediately became the picture of innocents, which fooled no one of course.

"Nothing at all," James said evasively.

"I don't think Andrea Brown thought it was nothing having her- Agh-mmph!" Albus started to say, but James dug an elbow hard into his side before he could finish.

"You'll tell me later," Teddy said, looking curious, but resumed reading.

**Professor Sprout took a large key from her belt and unlocked the door. Harry caught a whiff of damp earth and fertilizer mingling with the heavy perfume of some giant, umbrella-sized flowers dangling from the ceiling. He was about to follow Ron and Hermione inside when Lockhart's hand shot out.**

Several people groaned.

"Can't we just skip this part?" James begged.

"I have a feeling this is going to be a very long book with him in it," Rose predicted glumly when Teddy shook his head.

"**Harry! I've been wanting a word — you don't mind if he's a couple of minutes late, do you, Professor Sprout?"**

**Judging by Professor Sprout's scowl, she did mind, but Lockhart said, "That's the ticket," and closed the greenhouse door in her face.**

Rose looked indignant. "I can't believe Mum ever read his books."

James and Fred both pretended to be shocked in a very noisy manner. "This? Coming from the Great Bookworm of Britain!"

"It's blasphemy I tell you!"

"Oh, shut up!"

"**Harry," said Lockhart, his large white teeth gleaming in the sunlight as he shook his head. "Harry, Harry, Harry."**

**Completely nonplussed, Harry said nothing.**

"**When I heard — well, of course, it was all my fault. Could have kicked myself."**

"What is he talking about?" Fred asked, looking confused.

"I think I know," Teddy said, looking a bit disgusted.

**Harry had no idea what he was talking about. He was about to say so when Lockhart went on, "Don't know when I've been more shocked. Flying a car to Hogwarts! Well, of course, I knew at once why you'd done it. **

"Unless he was the one who blocked the barrier, I highly doubt that," Albus said, realizing what Lockhart was on about and sincerely glad that he had never had a teacher this completely self-centered.

**Stood out a mile. Harry, Harry, **_**Harry.**_**"**

**It was remarkable how he could show every one of those brilliant teeth even when he wasn't talking.**

Fred burst out laughing. "Now that…" he chuckled, "is talent."

"How else do you think he got his faithful following of middle-aged witches?" James asked. "It certainly wasn't his brains."

"Then I guess you've got nothing to worry about later in life," Rose said sweetly.

James pulled back his lips to grin with all his teeth. "Why thank you, Rosie."

"Not the part I was talking about," she muttered.

"**Gave you a taste for publicity, didn't I?" said Lockhart. "Gave you the **_**bug. **_**You got onto the front page of the paper with me and you couldn't wait to do it again."**

By this point everybody was gaping disbelievingly at the book. The idea of Harry _ever _doing anything with the sole purpose of getting on the front page of the paper was as ridiculous as that event being the first thing to get him publicity. Lockhart was an idiot. He really was.

"**Oh, no, Professor, see —"**

"**Harry, Harry, Harry," said Lockhart, reaching out and grasping his shoulder. "**_**I understand**_**. Natural to want a bit more once you've had that first taste — and I blame myself for giving you that, because it was bound to go to your head — but see here, young man, you can't start **_**flying cars **_**to try and get yourself noticed. Just calm down, all right? Plenty of time for all that when you're older. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking! 'It's all right for him, he's an internationally famous wizard already!' But when I was twelve, I was just as much of a nobody as you are now. **

Teddy nearly choked on his incredulity at the last words.

"Is he serious?" James demanded. "He's talking to _Harry freaking Potter_! One of the most famous wizards of the century who _wishes _he was a nobody!"

"Come on, give him a break," Fred said, to everyone's astonishment. "It's got to take a lot of time and effort to stare lovingly at his own reflection. He hasn't got time to read the paper."

The astonishment vanished. That was more like it.

**In fact, I'd say I was even more of a nobody! I mean, a few people have heard of you, haven't they? **

"Yeah, a few," Rose repeated faintly. This guy was _unbelievable._

**All that business with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" He glanced at the lightning scar on Harry's forehead. "I know, I know — it's not quite as good as winning **_**Witch Weekly's **_**Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row, as I have — **

Teddy couldn't help it, he dropped the book and buried his face in his hands to hide the fact that he was laughing hysterically. It was all just so _ridiculous_. You had to be dangerously conceited to think winning an award for your _smile _was better than stopping the most evil wizard in a century.

The others stared at Teddy, a little taken aback, but after a second James and Fred started sniggering too and soon they were hooting with laughter. It was infectious. The others started grinning and laughing and before they knew it they were all rolling around on the ground laughing themselves silly at Lockhart's expense.

When finally Teddy managed to get breath enough to continue reading, tears were streaming down his face.

**but it's a **_**start, **_**Harry, it's a **_**start.**_**"**

That set them off again, and Teddy fought to keep a straight face as he kept reading.

**He gave Harry a hearty wink and strode off. Harry stood stunned for a few seconds, then, remembering he was supposed to be in the greenhouse, he opened the door and slid inside.**

**Professor Sprout was standing behind a trestle bench in the center of the greenhouse. About twenty pairs of different-colored earmuffs were lying on the bench. **

"Erm… why?" Scorpius asked, looking confused.

"You learn how to take care of arctic plants in their natural conditions in second year," James told him, rolling his eyes like Scorpius should have known this.

"Don't listen to them," Teddy advised. "You need the earmuffs so the plants' screaming doesn't knock you out."

Scorpius eyed them suspiciously, not sure who – if either – to believe.

**When Harry had taken his place between Ron and Hermione, she said, "We'll be repotting Mandrakes today. **

Rose gave an audible gasp of understanding, but Scorpius, Albus, Lily, and Hugo still looked baffled.

**Now, who can tell me the properties of the Mandrake?"**

**To nobody's surprise, Hermione's hand was first into the air.**

Nobody behind the shed was surprised either because Rose looked like she was dying to enlighten them on the properties of Mandrakes too.

"**Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative," said Hermione,** **sounding as usual as though she had swallowed the textbook.**

"So just like Rosie then," James smirked. "I check her cereal every morning to make sure she won't choke on parchment."

Rose made a face at him, but she was a little pink at being compared to her mother's brilliance.

"**It is used to return people who have been transfigured or cursed to their original state."**

"**Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor," said Professor Sprout. "The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes. It is also, however, dangerous. Who can tell me why?"**

"Rose can!" James answered cheerily.

**Hermione's hand narrowly missed Harry's glasses as it shot up again.**

"You'd have thought he'd learn by now," Albus muttered, eyeing Rose warily. It had happened to him on more than one occasion.

"**The cry of the Mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it," she said promptly.**

"**Precisely. Take another ten points," said Professor Sprout.**

"**Now, the Mandrakes we have here are still very young."**

**She pointed to a row of deep trays as she spoke, and everyone shuffled forward for a better look. A hundred or so tufty little plants, purplish green in color, were growing there in rows. They looked quite unremarkable to Harry, who didn't have the slightest idea what Hermione meant by the "cry" of the Mandrake.**

"**Everyone take a pair of earmuffs," said Professor Sprout.**

Scorpius cast a dubious look at Teddy.

"They really do scream?" he asked skeptically.

"Of course they do!" Rose said indignantly. "Mum just said so!"

"Er… right," Scorpius mumbled, looking embarrassed. Albus sniggered in his direction and he scowled at his friend.

**There was a scramble as everyone tried to seize a pair that wasn't pink and fluffy.**

"**When I tell you to put them on, make sure your ears are **_**completely **_**covered," said Professor Sprout. "When it is safe to removethem, I will give you the thumbs-up. Right — earmuffs **_**on.**_**"**

**Harry snapped the earmuffs over his ears. They shut out sound completely. Professor Sprout put the pink, fluffy pair over her own ears, rolled up the sleeves of her robes, grasped one of the tufty plants firmly, and pulled hard.**

**Harry let out a gasp of surprise that no one could hear.**

**Instead of roots, a small, muddy, and extremely ugly baby popped out of the earth. **

Albus, Scorpius, Lily, and Hugo looked about as surprised as Harry must have been.

"So that's what they mean by cry," Scorpius muttered.

"That's so cool!" Lily squealed excitedly.

James rolled his eyes at her. "That's our little Flower Power," he teased, rubbing his knuckles on the top of her head and making her red hair frizz out. "The next Hogwarts Herbology professor in training!"

Lily returned the favor, making James's already-messy hair stand on end and giving him the look of someone recently electrocuted. "You don't have to be a gardener to think Mandrakes our cool!" she told him with dignity.

"You know, Lily Potter is probably the most suitable name for a Herbology professor I've ever heard," Teddy said, winking at Lily.

Lily paused in her enthusiastic messing-up of her brother's hair to consider this suggestion.

"It's something to think about," she decided finally, grinning at her godbrother.

"Oh, come on! That's so not fair!" James complained. "If I said that, you'd have bitten me or pulled my hair or something weird like that!"

"That's because I like Teddy better than you," Lily told him with a beatific smile.

James playfully pushed her backwards while Teddy smirked at him in a triumphant way.

**The leaves were growing right out of his head. He had pale green, mottled skin, and was clearly bawling at the top of his lungs.**

**Professor Sprout took a large plant pot from under the table and plunged the Mandrake into it, burying him in dark, damp compost until only the tufted leaves were visible. Professor Sprout dusted off her hands, gave them all the thumbs-up, and removed her own earmuffs.**

"**As our Mandrakes are only seedlings, their cries won't kill yet," she said calmly as though she'd just done nothing more exciting than water a begonia. "However, they **_**will **_**knock you out for several hours, and as I'm sure none of you want to miss your first day back, **

"Oh no, not at all," James said innocently.

"Missing potions finals that you didn't study for on the other hand…" Fred smirked.

"Exactly how much trouble did you get into with Neville last year?" Teddy asked resignedly.

"Well… quite a bit really," James said, considering the matter.

Teddy just shook his head. He had learned long ago that James Potter was an uncontainable force. Well, that's what Harry and Ginny got for naming him after two marauders.

**make sure your earmuffs are securely in place while you work. I will attract your attention when it is time to pack up.**

"**Four to a tray — there is a large supply of pots here — compost in the sacks over there — and be careful of the Venomous Tentacula, it's teething."**

**She gave a sharp slap to a spiky, dark red plant as she spoke, making it draw in the long feelers that had been inching sneakily over her shoulder.**

"Okay, I think it might be in Hogwarts's best interest to remove you two from Herbology class all together," Teddy told Fred and James upon seeing the look they exchanged at the teething remark.

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione were joined at their tray by a curly-haired Hufflepuff boy Harry knew by sight but had never spoken to.**

"**Justin Finch-Fletchley," he said brightly, shaking Harry by the hand. "Know who you are, of course, the famous Harry Potter. . . . And you're Hermione Granger — always top in everything" **

Hugo grinned proudly at the comment, but Albus noticed with a frown that Rose's smile seemed a little strained. He wondered what was going on under that curly mop of hers. But, with a sinking feeling, he thought he understood all too well. He'd noticed it at some parts of the last book, too. He supposed he'd have to talk to her about it soon. **  
(Hermione beamed as she had her hand shaken too) "— and Ron Weasley. Wasn't that your flying car?"**

"Yeah it was!" James said excitedly.

"Probably not the best time to remind him though," Teddy said, smiling slightly.

**Ron didn't smile. The Howler was obviously still on his mind.**

"**That Lockhart's something, isn't he?" **

James coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "fraud!"

**said Justin happily as they began filling their plant pots with dragon dung compost. "Awfully brave chap. **

Several groans ran around the circle and James said loudly, "He's one of them!"

**Have you read his books? I'd have died of fear if I'd been cornered in a telephone booth by a werewolf, but he stayed cool and — zap — just **_**fantastic.**_

"Yeah, really wonderful," Teddy said darkly, thinking of how the werewolf must have been so thrilled to have that experience publicized in a best-seller. He doubted it did werewolf legislation any good.

"**My name was down for Eton, you know. I can't tell you how glad I am I came here instead. Of course, Mother was slightly disappointed, but since I made her read Lockhart's books I think she's begun to see how useful it'll be to have a fully trained wizard in the family. . . ."**

**After that they didn't have much chance to talk. Their earmuffs were back on and they needed to concentrate on the Mandrakes. Professor Sprout had made it look extremely easy, but it wasn't. The Mandrakes didn't like coming out of the earth, but didn't seem to want to go back into it either. They squirmed, kicked, flailed their sharp little fists, and gnashed their teeth; Harry spent ten whole minutes trying to squash a particularly fat one into a pot.**

**By the end of the class, Harry, like everyone else, was sweaty, aching, and covered in earth. Everyone traipsed back to the castle for a quick wash and then the Gryffindors hurried off to Transfiguration.**

**Professor McGonagall's classes were always hard work, but today was especially difficult. Everything Harry had learned last year seemed to have leaked out of his head during the summer. **

"That is a serious problem," James commented.

"Not when Rose is your best friend," Albus said good-naturedly, remembering their primary school days, but Rose seemed to look more down-cast at this. Albus nudged her with his shoulder and gave her a questioning look, to which she only smiled and shrugged.

**He was supposed to be turning a beetle into a button, but all he managed to do was give his beetle a lot of exercise as it scuttled over the desktop avoiding his wand.**

**Ron was having far worse problems. He had patched up his wand with some borrowed Spellotape, but it seemed to be damaged beyond repair. It kept crackling and sparking at odd moments, and every time Ron tried to transfigure his beetle it engulfed him in thick gray smoke that smelled of rotten eggs. Unable to see what he was doing, Ron accidentally squashed his beetle with his elbow and had to ask for a new one. Professor McGonagall wasn't pleased.**

"Tough luck, mate," Teddy said sympathetically as Fred and James winced.

**Harry was relieved to hear the lunch bell. His brain felt like a wrung sponge. Everyone filed out of the classroom except him and Ron, who was whacking his wand furiously on the desk.**

"Somehow, I don't think that's going to help," Rose said, smiling a little at her father's behavior.

"**Stupid — useless — thing —"**

"**Write home for another one," Harry suggested as the wand let off a volley of bangs like a firecracker.**

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that'd go over well," Fred said sarcastically. "Dear Mum, you know that whole car thing? Well turns out on top of almost getting Dad fired and me and Harry expelled, I also crashed the car and broke my wand. Think you could send me a new one? Love Ron!"

"I'm pretty sure he _wouldn't _survive that," James smirked.

"**Oh, yeah, and get another Howler back," said Ron, stuffing the now hissing wand into his bag. " '**_**It's your own fault your wand gotsnapped **_**—' "**

"Well it is," Rose muttered.

"I think, considering what Harry, Ron and Hermione seem to like to get up to at school, that it would be better to endure another howler and get a working wand than to try to use that one all year," Teddy said wisely. "Especially since he was using a hand-me-down wand in the first place."

**They went down to lunch, where Ron's mood was not improved by Hermione's showing them the handful of perfect coat buttons she had produced in Transfiguration.**

"**What've we got this afternoon?" said Harry, hastily changing the subject.**

"**Defense Against the Dark Arts," said Hermione at once.**

"_**Why,**_**" demanded Ron, seizing her schedule, "have you outlined all Lockhart's lessons in little hearts?"**

Hugo buried his face in his hands while most of the others burst out laughing.

"She really had it bad," James chortled.

"Just goes to show you what kind of reputation dashing good looks can get you," Teddy said, screwing up his face and changing his hair and eyes to a remarkable imitation of Lockhart's description.

"Please, never do that again," James shuddered squeezing his eyes shut while Fred pretended to swoon.

**Hermione snatched the schedule back, blushing furiously.**

**They finished lunch and went outside into the overcast courtyard. Hermione sat down on a stone step and buried her nose in **_**Voyages with Vampires **_**again. Harry and Ron stood talking about Quidditch for several minutes before Harry became aware that he was being closely watched.**

Fred and James started imitating the creepy music from the old scary movies they'd secretly watched the last time the Grangers had offered to babysit the lot of the Weasleys. (It was a rare occurrence needless to say)

**Looking up, he saw the very small, mousy-haired boy he'd seen trying on the Sorting Hat last night staring at Harry as though transfixed. He was clutching what looked like an ordinary Muggle camera, **

Rose frowned. "That does sound like almost a perfect description of Colin Creevey. He even carries around that camera all the time."

Albus shrugged. "Like we said, probably his dad, Denis. He'd have been at school about the time our parents were."

**and the moment Harry looked at him, he went bright red.**

"**All right, Harry? I'm — I'm Colin Creevey," he said breathlessly,**

Rose's hands flew up to her mouth. Albus and Scorpius exchanged bewildered looks before exactly what that meant began to sink in.

"Must be Denis's brother," Teddy said very quietly. "He must have – have died during the war," he added to Lily and Hugo who didn't seem to understand why James and Fred were looking suddenly solemn and Rose's eyes had begun to fill with tears.

The younger two hadn't been to Hogwarts yet. They hadn't seen how wide-spread the damages of the last war had been. There were a lot of students who had lost aunts or uncles or grandparents, or some even brothers and sisters, especially in Teddy's year. Teddy was not in a small minority, being an orphan. But Lily and Hugo hadn't experienced seeing that yet.

"He'd have been, what? Sixteen at the most?" Albus half-whispered, doing the math in his head. It was making him feel sick again as imagined his own roommate. Lily had buried her face in Teddy's shirt and Hugo was looking rather shocked. It was obviously not the first time any of them had encountered tragedies of the war, but this one was so unexpected and so close to home. They'd all known Denis Creevey since they were little. He worked with Harry and Ron and Teddy now, too. Albus had shared a dorm with Colin for more than a year and he had never known where his name came from.

They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts as the whoops and laughter of Roxanne, Louis, and Dominique floated to them from the Paddock and Mrs. Weasley's humming as she weeded the garden near the house drifted gently about the yard.

Then Teddy cleared his through and kept reading in a somewhat heavy voice.

**taking a tentative step forward. "I'm in Gryffindor, too.**

"That doesn't surprise me," James said quietly, thinking this kid probably snuck back to fight in the final battle, even though he'd have been underage at the time.

**D'you think — would it be all right if — can I have a picture?" he said, raising the camera hopefully.**

"**A picture?" Harry repeated blankly.**

"**So I can prove I've met you," said Colin Creevey eagerly, edging further forward. "I know all about you. Everyone's told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you and how he disappeared and everything and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead" (his eyes raked Harry's hairline) "and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures'll **_**move.**_**" Colin drew a great shuddering breath of excitement and said, "It's **_**amazing **_**here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either. So I'm taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it'd be really good if I had one of you" — he looked imploringly at Harry — "maybe your friend could take it and I could stand next to you? And then, could you sign it?"**

Teddy frowned. So he was Muggle-born. During the war.

Fred and James were exchanging looks that told Teddy they had realized this too. He felt a new pang of sorrow for the kid.

"_**Signed photos**_**? You're giving out **_**signed photos, **_**Potter?"**

"Three guesses who that is," James said, glowering suddenly.

Scorpius sighed. And now he'd probably have to listen to his dad make fun of a kid who was going to lose his life within the next few years.

**Loud and scathing, Draco Malfoy's voice echoed around the courtyard. He had stopped right behind Colin, flanked, as he always was at Hogwarts, by his large and thuggish cronies, Crabbe and Goyle.**

"**Everyone line up!" Malfoy roared to the crowd. "Harry Potter's giving out signed photos!"**

"Funny thing is, I bet people would line up for that," James said with a half-hearted grin at how his dad would look if someone yelled that out in the middle of Diagon Alley.

"**No, I'm not," said Harry angrily, his fists clenching. "Shut up, Malfoy."**

"**You're just jealous," piped up Colin, whose entire body was about as thick as Crabbe's neck.**

"No one can say he doesn't deserve Gryffindor now," Albus said, smiling a little sadly.

"I definitely think I like this kid," James agreed and the rest nodded.

"_**Jealous**_**?" said Malfoy, who didn't need to shout anymore: Half the courtyard was listening in. "Of what? I don't want a foul scar right across my head, thanks. I don't think getting your head cut open makes you that special, myself."**

"I'm pretty sure you do," Fred contradicted.

"Yeah, from the way he was talking in Borgan and Burke's Colin hit in on the head," James nodded.

**Crabbe and Goyle were sniggering stupidly.**

"**Eat slugs, Malfoy," said Ron angrily. **

Something about this comment stirred something in the back of Hugo's mind, but he couldn't remember what exactly.

James, however, was sniggering as he imagined Draco Malfoy being forced to eat slugs. "Well, they're one of the few things that are as slimy and repulsive as he is," he whispered to Fred.

**Crabbe stopped laughing and started rubbing his knuckles in a menacing way.**

"**Be careful, Weasley," sneered Malfoy. "You don't want to start any trouble or your mommy'll have to come and take you away from school." He put on a shrill, piercing voice. "**_**If you put anothertoe out of line **_**—"**

**A knot of Slytherin fifth years nearby laughed loudly at this.**

"**Weasley would like a signed photo, Potter," smirked Malfoy. "It'd be worth more than his family's whole house —"**

Nearly everyone was looking furious, Scorpius in particular. For the short time he'd been there, he found he really loved the Burrow. Malfoy Manor was too big and shadowy and _empty_. But his father wouldn't leave it. It was all they had left of their legacy anymore, or at least that was what his mother had told him when he'd asked why they needed such a big house for just the three of them.

**Ron whipped out his Spellotaped wand, **

"I don't see this going well," James said in a pretty good imitation of Professor Trelawney.

**but Hermione shut **_**Voyages with Vampires **_**with a snap and whispered, "Look out!"**

"**What's all this, what's all this?" Gilderoy Lockhart **

"Argh!" James groaned.

"Like a shark to blood," Rose said darkly. "Attracted to the scent of someone getting more attention than him."

**was striding toward them, his turquoise robes swirling behind him. "Who's giving out signed photos?"**

**Harry started to speak **

"Bad move," Teddy muttered. "Now he's just going to think you're more of a celebrity wanna-be."

**but he was cut short as Lockhart flung an arm around his shoulders and thundered jovially, "Shouldn't have asked! We meet again, Harry!"**

"Most unfortunately," Lily muttered, cringing at the description of Lockhart's jovial thundering.

**Pinned to Lockhart's side and burning with humiliation, Harry saw Malfoy slide smirking back into the crowd.**

"**Come on then, Mr. Creevey," said Lockhart, beaming at Colin. "A double portrait, can't do better than that, and we'll **_**both **_**sign it for you."**

**Colin fumbled for his camera and took the picture as the bell rang behind them, signaling the start of afternoon classes.**

"**Off you go, move along there," Lockhart called to the crowd, and he set off back to the castle with Harry, who was wishing he knew a good Vanishing Spell, still clasped to his side.**

"**A word to the wise, Harry," said Lockhart paternally as they entered the building through a side door. "I covered up for you back there with young Creevey — **

"No, you made it a thousand times worse," Lily huffed while Fred and James mimed gagging, their theatrics getting more extravagant with every word Lockhart uttered.

**if he was photographing me, too, your schoolmates won't think you're setting yourself up so much. . . ."**

**Deaf to Harry's stammers, Lockhart swept him down a corridor lined with staring students and up a staircase.**

"**Let me just say that handing out signed pictures at this stage of your career isn't sensible — looks a tad bigheaded, Harry, to be frank. **

Rose buried her face in her hands while Albus looked simply stunned that anybody had ever called his father bigheaded. Scorpius was torn between amusement at the looks on his friends' faces and mild disbelief that someone could be so completely egocentric.

**There may well come a time when, like me, you'll need to keep a stack handy wherever you go, but" — he gave a little chortle — "I don't think you're quite there yet."**

**They had reached Lockhart's classroom and he let Harry go at last. **

"Thank Merlin!" Hugo said, watching Fred and James collapse to the ground, tongues lolling out and eyes bulging.

"His… enormous… self-importance… has killed me…." Fred gasped.

"I don't think we'll make it through this book if we have to hear much more of that," Albus said dryly.

"No! You musn't give in to him little brother!" James cried, lunging forward to shake Albus by the shoulders. "Keep strong! Keep strong for Dad!"

"James! Knock it off! My Glasses!" Albus tried to say without bighting his own tongue off.

He shoved James roughly away and started feeling around for the round glasses that had gone flying off his face.

"Right, I'm reinstating the no-manhandling rule," Teddy said, leaning forward to pluck Al's glasses off the ground and put them in his hands.

"But Teddy!" James pretended to whine.

"No buts," Teddy said firmly before picking the book up again.

**Harry yanked his robes straight and headed for a seat at the very back of the class, where he busied himself with piling all seven of Lockhart's books in front of him, so that he could avoid looking at the real thing.**

"Can't blame him there," Fred nodded.

"I don't understand how they managed to sit through a year of classes with him," Scorpius agreed.

"I dunno, it might have provided some interesting opportunities," James said ponderously.

**The rest of the class came clattering in, and Ron and Hermione sat down on either side of Harry.**

"**You could've fried an egg on your face," said Ron. "You'd better hope Creevey doesn't meet Ginny, or they'll be starting a Harry Potter fan club."**

"I wonder if that ever happened!" James gasped through all the laughter.

At this, Lily collapsed in a fresh round of giggles. "Do… do you remember?" she panted to Hugo and he started cracking up all over again too.

"What?" James demanded, looking painfully curious about the source of their hysteria.

"Last year…in the back of Mum's old closet…"

"There was… there was…"

"A box of badges…"

"And an oath!"

"For something called The Harry Potter Supporters!"

"That's brilliant!" James howled. "Mum wasn't just a fan girl, she was a Harry Potter Supporter! Oh if she were anybody but my mum I'd have so much blackmail material here."

It took a long time for them all to settle down again and by the time Teddy continued reading, there were tears of laughter streaking his face. Ginny wasn't _his _mum (well, not enough that he could use this information to very amusing ends if he wanted to).

"**Shut up," snapped Harry. The last thing he needed was for Lockhart to hear the phrase "Harry Potter fan club."**

"That would not be good," James said, torn between amusement and agony at the idea of what Lockhart would do if he heard that.

**When the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and silence fell. He reached forward, picked up Neville Longbottom's copy of **_**Travels with Trolls, **_**and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.**

"**Me," he said, pointing at it and winking as well. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of **_**Witch Weekly's**_** Most-Charming-Smile Award — but I don't talk about that. **

Fred gave a very loud, disbelieving snort.

"Oh, never!" James added.

**I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by **_**smiling **_**at her!"**

**He waited for them to laugh; **

"I think he'll find himself waiting a very long time," Fred remarked.

"Unless the joke was him suggesting he _actually_ got rid of the Bandon Banshee, because that is a hilarious!" James laughed.

**a few people smiled weakly.**

"**I see you've all bought a complete set of my books — well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about — just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in —"**

**When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, "You have thirty minutes — start — **_**now**_**!"**

**Harry looked down at his paper and read:**

_**1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color**_**?**

_**2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition**_**?**

_**3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date**_**?**

"Is he serious?" Rose demanded, looking outraged at this insult to the sacred domain of learning. "That's what he wants them to take away from his books?" It seemed she her indignation was obstructing her ability to speak any further because she continued to mouth at the book, but no more words came out.

"Now, Rosie this is very important knowledge for defense," Fred began in a lecture-type voice. "For instance, if you want to avoid hoards of emotional young women, you would do well to avoid whatever Lockhart's favorite color happens to be."

Rose apparently didn't hear him.

**On and on it went, over three sides of paper, right down to:**

_**54. When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be**_**?**

**Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and rifled**

**through them in front of the class.**

"**Tut, tut — hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. **

"Remember that," Fred said sharply. "It's crucial to survival!"

**I say so in **_**Year with the Yeti. **_**And a few of you need to read **_**Wanderings with Werewolves **_**more carefully — I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples — though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky!"**

Teddy snorted. Yes, because the two are quite interchangeable.

**He gave them another roguish wink. Ron was now staring at Lockhart with an expression of disbelief on his face; **

"He must look a lot like Rosie then," James commented, flicking a small pebble in her direction to try to get a reaction out of her. Her expression didn't change, but a second later James had to through himself flat on the ground to avoid the pebble which had come shooting dangerously back at his head.

**Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, who were sitting in front, were shaking with silent laughter. Hermione, on the other hand, was listening to**

**Lockhart with rapt attention and gave a start when he mentioned her name.**

Rose shook her head slightly in utter disbelief at her mother, an action usually reserved for her father.

"**. . . but Miss Hermione Granger knew my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions**

James couldn't help but snort at that and soon he and Fred were cracking up all over again. Teddy fought to keep a straight face as he kept going.

— **good girl! In fact" — he flipped her paper over — "full marks! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?"**

"Full marks!" James exclaimed incredulously. "I mean I know this is Hermione we're talking about, but come on!

**Hermione raised a trembling hand.**

"**Excellent!" beamed Lockhart. "Quite excellent! Take ten points for Gryffindor! And so — to business —"**

**He bent down behind his desk and lifted a large, covered cage onto it.**

Teddy suddenly paled.

"He – he's not actually going to try to give a demonstration or something, is he?" he asked, looking rather scared. A self-glorifying idiot, a dangerous creature, and a class full of twelve-year-olds was not a good combination.

"Oh, I hope very much that it's just a pixie in there," Rose murmured.

"**Now — be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. **

"I highly doubt that," Teddy muttered, trepidation increasing.

**All I ask is that you remain calm."**

**In spite of himself, Harry leaned around his pile of books for a better look at the cage. Lockhart placed a hand on the cover. Dean and Seamus had stopped laughing now. Neville was cowering in his front row seat.**

"**I must ask you not to scream," said Lockhart in a low voice. "It might provoke them."**

**As the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover.**

"**Yes," he said dramatically. "**_**Freshly caught Cornish pixies.**_**"**

Teddy snorted out the last four words, all fear utterly evaporating. "Looks like your hoping paid off, Rosie!" he laughed to a rather stunned Rose.

The others were laughing at Lockhart's dramatics.

"At least it would be a source of amusement," James conceded, sniggering.

"I don't think any amount of amusement could drown out the nasty taste of his ego, though," Scorpius said.

**Seamus Finnigan couldn't control himself. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn't mistake for a scream of terror.**

"**Yes?" He smiled at Seamus.**

"**Well, they're not — they're not very — **_**dangerous, **_**are they?" Seamus choked.**

"**Don't be so sure!" said Lockhart, waggling a finger annoyingly at Seamus. "Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!"**

**The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies arguing. **

"A bunch of what?" Fred interrupted, looking confused.

Rose, being Rose, opened her mouth to answer, but to her surprise she was beaten to the punch.

"They're small, long-tailed, seed-eating parrots native to Australia."

Everyone looked around, in general astonishment, at Scorpius. He turned pink and looked down at his hands, muttering something about his father and his grandfather and peacocks.

The others exchanged baffled looks and Teddy decided to just keep reading.

**The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and making bizarre faces at the people nearest them.**

"Just like James with caffeine," Albus said ruefully.

"**Right, then," Lockhart said loudly. "Let's see what you make of them!" And he opened the cage.**

Rose buried her face in her hands. "He's never going to get them back in the cage, now!"

Teddy, on the other hand, was laughing with the rest of the boys. "At least it will be an interesting class."

**It was pandemonium. The pixies shot in every direction like rockets. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him into the air. **

"Oh, Neville!" Lily said sympathetically, though, trying not to giggle. The boys were having no such reservations.

**Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more effectively than a rampaging rhino. They grabbed ink bottles and sprayed the class with them, shredded books and papers, tore pictures from the walls, up-ended the waste basket, grabbed bags and books and threw them out of the smashed window; within minutes, half the class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the iron chandelier in the ceiling.**

"Sounds like my kind of class," James, ever the chaos junkie, grinned, slapping Fred a high five while Rose looked utterly horrified.

"**Come on now — round them up, round them up, they're only pixies," Lockhart shouted.**

"I thought five minutes ago they were devilishly tricky little blighters," Fred said innocently.

"My guess is he was embarrassed about the class laughing at his pixies so he let them loose on the class and now he doesn't know what to do with the chaos.

**He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed, "**_**Peskipiksi Pesternomi**_**!"**

"What exactly is that supposed to do?" Rose asked, a note of derision in her voice.

"I think he made it up on the stop," Teddy answered, hiding a smirk.

**It had absolutely no effect; one of the pixies seized his wand and threw it out of the window, too. Lockhart gulped and dived under his own desk, narrowly avoiding being squashed by Neville, who fell a second later as the chandelier gave way.**

Several people winced.

"I just can't see Neville as being the type to get hung on a chandelier by pixies," James mused. "He seems to cool for that."

**The bell rang and there was a mad rush toward the exit. In the relative calm that followed, Lockhart straightened up, caught sight of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who were almost at the door, and said, "Well, I'll ask you three to just nip the rest of them back into their cage." He swept past them and shut the door quickly behind him.**

"They were so close to freedom!" James lamented dramatically.

"Survival of the quickest," Fred intoned sagely "er – or something like that."

"It's fittest, Darwin," Rose told him, rolling her eyes.

"Huh?" said Fred, looking blank.

"Never mind, just keep reading!"

"**Can you **_**believe **_**him?" roared Ron as one of the remaining pixies bit him painfully on the ear.**

"No, not really," Hugo answered, wincing at the ear-biting.

"It is pretty incompetent behavior for a Professor," Teddy agreed with a slight frown.

"**He just wants to give us some hands-on experience," said Hermione, immobilizing two pixies at once with a clever Freezing Charm and stuffing them back into their cage.**

"_**Hands on**_**?" said Harry, who was trying to grab a pixie dancing out of reach with its tongue out. "Hermione, he didn't have a clue what he was doing —"**

"**Rubbish," said Hermione. "You've read his books — look at all those amazing things he's done —"**

"**He **_**says **_**he's done," Ron muttered.**

"Can you believe _her_?" James asked incredulously. "And she's supposed to be the smart one."

"It is a rare occurrence when Uncle Ron figures something out before Aunt Hermione," Fred noted.

"I suppose we can let this one slide since she was only twelve," said Teddy, trying and failing to imagine Hermione being so naïve. "That's the end of the chapter – thank god," he added, putting the book down.

"Thank Merlin!" James exclaimed. "That's more Lockhart than one person should be expected to take in one sitting."

"And there's undoubtedly more to come," Teddy sighed.

"I'll read next, shall I?" Rose offered, reaching for the book, but before she could pick it up, they heard Mrs. Weasley's calls that lunch was ready.


	8. Mudbloods and Murmurs

**Chapter 8-Mudbloods and Murmurs**

Albus and Rose were the last to make it to the back door. Deciding now would be as good a time as any, Albus grabbed Rose by the elbow and pulled her aside.

"Can I talk to you?" he muttered.

Rose nodded, wondering if this had something to do with why he'd fled the kitchen at breakfast. Scorpius hesitated on the threshold, looking uncertainly between his two friends and the kitchen bursting with their boisterous gaggle of cousins.

"Go on Scorp," Albus told him. "We'll only be a minute."

Scorpius eyed them curiously before turning and slipping into the crowd of Weasleys, looking rather awkward without Rose and Albus at his side. Albus dragged Rose around the corner of the house before he let go of her arm and turned to scrutinize her.

"What's up with you?" he asked rather bluntly.

She looked taken aback. "What d'you mean?"

"You keep going quiet and getting these weird looks when your mum comes up in the books," Albus clarified quietly. "I want to know what you're thinking."

"I really haven't a clue what you're talking about," Rose insisted, a convincingly quizzical expression crossing her freckled face. But Albus, who had seen Rose's lying skills in action on more occasions than he could count, knew her tells.

"Rose," Albus said slightly exasperatedly, pointing down at the designs she had started to scuff into the dirt with her heel.

Rose blushed and stamped them out.

"So what's it to you?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and meeting her cousin's steady gaze fiercely. Why did he have to notice _everything_?

Albus rolled his eyes. "Do I really need to answer that? Rosie, come on."

"Don't call me that," Rose snapped automatically. "And who made you the captain of twenty questions? Are _you_ ready to talk about why you started bawling this morning?"

Albus blanched and Rose instantly regretted throwing that back in his face.

"Touché," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning away.

"Al! Wait!" Rose sighed, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him back around. "I shouldn't have said that. It wasn't fair."

Albus let out a gusty breath and dropped to the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees as if he were cold. Rose sank down beside him, eyeing his brooding expression.

"A truth for a truth?" she asked, her mouth twitching at the mention of the old game they used to play to get information. It used to be things like where their grandfather kept his chocolate frog stash or when Uncle Charlie's next visit was going to be, but evidently the stakes were higher now.

Albus sucked in a breath, considering the offer, then he mumbled, "I… I dunno. I guess… it scares me. It scares me what else we'll have to read about, what else has happened to Dad that nobody ever knew about. And it scares me because I don't know how someone can take all that – not just the Dursleys, Voldemort and the war and everything – and just go on being normal.

"When I was a little kid, I woke up one time to get a drink and I found my mum and dad in the kitchen, just sitting on the floor and crying. My mum was anyway, and Dad was holding her and shaking really hard and there was something about the way he looked that scared me. I thought he looked like he was going to break into a million pieces or something.

"I figured out later that it had to do with the war. Actually, your mum told me that when I told her I was worried about them. But I just keep seeing that look on Dad's face and…" he trailed off resting his chin on his knees and gazing unseeingly at a butterfly that was fluttering around the flowerbeds.

"Oh, Al," Rose sighed. She wanted to hug him, to pull some logical answer out of thin air that would make his worrying seem ridiculous, but she couldn't. Instead she flung an arm around his shoulders and said, "This is why I think they never told us any of this stuff."

"Yeah, probably," Albus agreed. "It makes me think maybe we _shouldn't _keep reading, but I know I'll never be able to just walk away now that I know it's out there. I still reckon it's better to know. But anyway, I think it's your turn. Spill."

He straightened up and turned to face Rose expectantly. She stayed silent, biting her lip and trying to figure out how exactly to explain it.

"Rose," Albus prompted impatiently. "I told _you_."

"Fine! I – no matter what I do I'm never going to be able to be as good as my mother!" Rose blurted the words out and then quickly buried her face in her arms.

Albus grimaced at having his suspicion confirmed.

"Is that a terrible thing to be resentful over?" Rose asked in a muffled voice, not raising her head.

"Rose –" Albus started but she interrupted him.

"It is, isn't it? I mean it's not her fault, and she's done so many brilliant things! But she's always going to be 'the most brilliant witch of her age' and I'm always going to be just her daughter! I thought I was doing well in school and everything, but Mum did better. And no matter what I do, I just don't measure up! She helped bring the most evil wizard in a century down more than once and she's revolutionized legislation and she got a hundred and twelve percent on her charms exam first year! I only got a hundred and _ten_, Albus! I'm always going to fall two percent short! No matter what I do, I won't ever be able to get out of her shadow!"

"Rose!" Albus cut in, slightly alarmed by the hysterical pitch her voice had reached.

"What?" she nearly shrieked, rounding on him.

"Calm down?" he said, the words coming out like a question as he raised his hands in surrender. Once Albus thought it was safe to continue, he said, "Look, we kinda get a raw deal, don't we? Our parents were heroes, and so everybody looks at _us _and sees _them. _But we _aren't _them, are we? So stop comparing yourself to your mother. You got _a hundred_ _and Ten _percent on your first year charms exam. That's bloody brilliant, Rose! That was the best score in the year! So what if it wasn't the best score ever achieved in history? It's one first-year charms exam. It's not like it dictates your whole future."

When all Rose did was blink at him, Albus got frustrated.

"It's like I said to Scorp last night! _We are not our parents! _Stop measuring yourself against what they did. Different times call for different measures." Albus pushed himself to his feet and looked down at his cousin. "And like I told Scorp last night, if I catch you doing it again, I'm gonna have to pound you."

"I'd like to see you try," Rose smirked, lightening a little at Albus's earnest words.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Albus exclaimed, pulling Rose to her feet too.

"Because you're a scrawny, specky git," she laughed. But then she added more seriously, "Thanks, though. For trying to talk some sense into me."

"Whoa, that's weird to hear coming from you," Albus joked and Rose stuck her tongue out at him.

"Come on. Scorpius only deserves to be alone with our crazy family for so long," she said, leading the way back to the kitchen door.

"I think we need a new hiding spot," James said as they all flopped down on the grass behind the shed after lunch.

"What's wrong with this one?" Teddy asked.

"Spiders!" Hugo exclaimed at once, jumping away from the cobweb he'd only just noticed hanging above his head.

"Besides spiders," Teddy amended, banishing the cobweb with a flick of his wand while Fred sniggered.

"Everybody knows about it!" James complained. "All Molly's got to do is come walking out here and listen for a second and she'll have everything she needs to rat us out."

"And as long as you don't _tell _her that, we should be okay," Teddy pointed out. "But if it makes you feel better, I can put up a charm that will give us a few seconds' warning if someone does come walking close enough to overhear us."

"It would make me feel even better if you taught me how to do that so I can put it on my room," James said hopefully, watching Teddy pull out his wand.

Teddy rolled his eyes and waved his wand in a wide circle, taking care to cast the charm nonverbally so James couldn't try it himself.

"Ready to keep reading?" Rose asked, the book already open in her lap.

"Go for it," Teddy nodded, sitting back down.

**Chapter Seven Mudbloods and Murmurs**

"What?"

Rose was surprised by the sudden sharpness in Teddy's voice. She repeated the chapter title, noting the way his features hardened.

"What's the matter, Teddy?" James asked for the group who were nearly all looking at Teddy's dark expression with mixtures of trepidation and confusion.

But it was Scorpius who answered. His voice shook slightly and he looked paler than usual. "That word. Mu- the first one, it's something really bad. Isn't it?" he added, looking at Teddy.

"Yeah, it is," Teddy agreed, glancing curiously at Scorpius. "It hasn't been used much since the end of the war though. Anybody that uses it… well, society doesn't take well to it. There were a few incidents that got pretty violent right after the war was over."

"What's it mean?" Fred asked. "I've never heard it before."

"Yes you have," James said suddenly. "Remember? That fifth year Slytherin, M.J. Bleachley, got into a whole _load _of trouble for calling some other kid that when we were in first year. Everyone was talking about it, but I don't know what it means."

"I'm sure you'll find out in this chapter. It represents a lot of terrible things," Teddy told him grimly. "Where did you hear it?" he added to Scorpius.

Scorpius stared fixedly at his hands. He wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but it gave him a sick feeling.

"My father," he whispered. "He was mad about something and I don't think he knew I was listening."

Teddy darkened even more.

After a minute of tense silence, Rose began reading again in an uncertain voice.

**Harry spent a lot of time over the next few days dodging out of sight whenever he saw Gilderoy Lockhart coming down a corridor. **

"I would too," James grumbled.

**Harder to avoid was Colin Creevey, who seemed to have memorized Harry's schedule. Nothing seemed to give Colin a bigger thrill than to say, "All right, Harry?" six or seven times a day and hear, "Hello, Colin," back, however exasperated Harry sounded when he said it.**

"I definitely like this kid," James said approvingly as the others chuckled.

**Hedwig was still angry with Harry about the disastrous car journey and Ron's wand was still malfunctioning, surpassing itself on Friday morning by shooting out of Ron's hand in Charms and hitting tiny old Professor Flitwick squarely between the eyes, creating a large, throbbing green boil where it had struck. **

"I think it would look good at him," Fred laughed.

"Well, an angry owl and a malfunctioning wand is what they get for stealing a flying car to get to school," Rose sniffed.

**So with one thing and another, Harry was quite glad to reach the weekend. He, Ron, and Hermione were planning to visit Hagrid on Saturday morning. Harry, however, was shaken awake several hours earlier than he would have liked by Oliver Wood, Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.**

"Oliver!" Fred grinned at the mention of his parents' friend.

"Kind of early for Quidditch practice," Teddy commented. "It's only the first week."

"Yes, but this is Oliver's team," Fred reminded him. "It's never too early for him."

"And that's why he's a bloody brilliant Keeper," James said, excited by the prospect of Quidditch. He really missed playing it with his cousins from dawn to midnight, which was how they usually kicked off the summer.

"**Whassamatter?" said Harry groggily.**

"**Quidditch practice!" said Wood. "Come on!"**

**Harry squinted at the window. There was a thin mist hanging across the pink-and-gold sky. Now that he was awake, he couldn't understand how he could have slept through the racket the birds were making.**

"**Oliver," Harry croaked. "It's the crack of dawn."**

"Exactly!" James exclaimed, a fanatic gleam in his eye.

"You know, you scare me sometimes," Fred told him matter-of-factly.

"If you ever try to get me up at dawn when _your _captain, I will not hesitate to strangle you," Albus informed his brother.

James pretended not to hear the warning.

"**Exactly," said Wood. He was a tall and burly sixth year and, at the moment, his eyes were gleaming with a crazed enthusiasm. **

"He does sound scarily like you," Rose said to James.  
James looked very pleased with this fact. Oliver _was _an amazing player.

"**It's part of our new training program. Come on, grab your broom, and**

**let's go," said Wood heartily. "None of the other teams have started training yet; we're going to be first off the mark this year —" **

**Yawning and shivering slightly, Harry climbed out of bed and tried to find his Quidditch robes.**

"**Good man," said Wood. "Meet you on the field in fifteen minutes." **

**When he'd found his scarlet team robes and pulled on his cloak for warmth, Harry scribbled a note to Ron explaining where he'd gone and went down the spiral staircase to the common room, his Nimbus Two Thousand on his shoulder. He had just reached the portrait hole when there was a clatter behind him and Colin Creevey came dashing down the spiral staircase, his camera swinging madly around his neck and something clutched in his hand.**

"He sounds very chipper for this early in the morning," Fred noticed.

"He seems very chipper no matter what time it is," James grinned.

"**I heard someone saying your name on the stairs, Harry! Look what I've got here! I've had it developed, I wanted to show you —"**

**Harry looked bemusedly at the photograph Colin was brandishing under his nose.**

**A moving, black-and-white Lockhart was tugging hard on an arm Harry recognized as his own. He was pleased to see that his photographic self was putting up a good fight and refusing to be dragged into view. **

"You fight him Dad!" James cheered.

"I bet he wishes he could do that in the press photos," Teddy laughed, shaking his head at his godfather's utter aversion to any kind of publicity.

**As Harry watched, Lockhart gave up and slumped, panting, against the white edge of the picture.**

"Yes!" James cheered, punching the air triumphantly.

"**Will you sign it?" said Colin eagerly.**

"Good luck there, mate," Albus said quietly.

"**No," said Harry flatly, glancing around to check that the room was really deserted. "Sorry, Colin, I'm in a hurry — Quidditch practice —"**

**He climbed through the portrait hole.**

"**Oh, wow! Wait for me! I've never watched a Quidditch game before!"**

"James?" Teddy said tentatively, watching James mouth soundlessly at the book.

"Erch – never – watched – a – Quiddtich Game – bzz – does not – zzzt – compute!" Fred said in a robot voice, poking James in the arm. James fell backwards, tongue lolling out and Fred made dramatic, dying-robot sound effects.

Rose gave them exasperated looks and kept reading.

**Colin scrambled through the hole after him.**

"**It'll be really boring," Harry said quickly, **

James shot up again, giving the book a shocked and offended sort of look. " 'Quidditch' and 'boring' do not belong in the same sentence unless that sentence is 'there is nothing boring about Quidditch'!"

**but Colin ignored him, his face shining with excitement.**

"And with that I have officially declared Colin Creevey awesome – by James Potter standards, not an easy achievement, as Al can testify to," James announced.

Albus threw a fistful of grass at his older brother.

"**You were the youngest House player in a hundred years, weren't you, Harry? Weren't you?" said Colin, trotting alongside him. **

"Sure was," Albus beamed proudly.

"**You must be brilliant. I've never flown. Is it easy? Is that your own broom? Is that the best one there is?"**

**Harry didn't know how to get rid of him. It was like having an extremely talkative shadow.**

"**I don't really understand Quidditch," said Colin breathlessly. **

"Yes, James, we know it's incredible to think there really are people out there who didn't grow up living and breathing Quidditch, but there are. In fact, your dad was one of those people before Hogwarts," Fred said with the exaggerated patients of one speaking to a small child, for James was gesturing wildly at the book looking flabbergasted beyond words.

"**Is it true there are four balls? And two of them fly around trying to knock people off their brooms?"**

"It's only the best part of the whole game!" Fred informed the book enthusiastically.

Rose hurriedly kept reading so they wouldn't be subjected to the age-old argument over the best aspects of Quidditch again.

"**Yes," said Harry heavily, resigned to explaining the complicated rules of Quidditch. "They're called Bludgers. There are two Beaters**

Fred cheered here and Rose resigned herself to having to listen to all the respective players battle for volume when their position was mentioned.

**on each team who carry clubs to beat the Bludgers away from their side. Fred and George Weasley are the Gryffindor Beaters."**

"Bloody brilliant beaters," Fred said emphatically over the others' cheers for their uncles.

"**And what are the other balls for?" Colin asked, tripping down a couple of steps because he was gazing open-mouthed at Harry.**

"**Well, the Quaffle — that's the biggish red one — is the one that scores goals. Three Chasers **

James and Lily cheered for their positions, smacking a high-five across the circle.

**on each team throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through the goal posts at the end of the pitch — they're three long poles with hoops on the end."**

"**And the fourth ball —"**

"— **is the Golden Snitch," said Harry, "and it's very small, very fast, and difficult to catch. But that's what the Seeker's got to do,**

Albus and Scorpius whooped and high-fived over Rose's head, making a surprising amount of noise for two relatively quiet people.

**because a game of Quidditch doesn't end until the Snitch has been caught. And whichever team's Seeker gets the Snitch earns his team an extra hundred and fifty points."**

"**And **_**you're **_**the Gryffindor Seeker, aren't you?" said Colin in awe.**

"**Yes," said Harry as they left the castle and started across the dew-drenched grass. "And there's the Keeper, too. **

Rose did not stoop to shouting like a barbarian, but she couldn't resist from adding some extra volume when she read her position. She couldn't let the others beat her out after all.

**He guards the goal posts. That's it, really."**

**But Colin didn't stop questioning Harry all the way down the sloping lawns to the Quidditch field, and Harry only shook him off when he reached the changing rooms; Colin called after him in a piping voice, "I'll go and get a good seat, Harry!" and hurried off to the stands.**

"I hope he's quick," Fred said with mock concern. "I don't know if he'll be able to fight off the teaming crowds that stampede to the Quidditch pitch at the break of dawn every Saturday morning."

"Be nice!" Rose chastised.

**The rest of the Gryffindor team were already in the changing room. Wood was the only person who looked truly awake. Fred and George Weasley were sitting, puffy-eyed and touslehaired, next to fourth year Alicia Spinnet, who seemed to be nodding off against the wall behind her. Her fellow Chasers, Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson, **

"Mum," Fred announced, smiling at the first mention of his mother in this book.

**were yawning side by side opposite them.**

"**There you are, Harry, what kept you?" said Wood briskly. "Now, I wanted a quick talk with you all before we actually get onto the field, because I spent the summer devising a whole new training program, which I really think will make all the difference. . . ."**

**Wood was holding up a large diagram of a Quidditch field, on which were drawn many lines, arrows, and crosses in different colored inks. He took out his wand, tapped the board, and the arrows began to wiggle over the diagram like caterpillars. **

"Next time Wood comes round the house I'm _so _asking him about that," James said, practically panting with excitement at all the Quidditch strategy talk. It was practically what he lived for.

Everyone who was most likely going to be under James's captaining groaned loudly while Teddy laughed at both the others' misfortune and James's complete obliviousness, too wrapped up in the possibility of wiggling diagrams to notice the distress of his future team.

**As Wood launched into a speech about his new tactics, Fred Weasley's head drooped right onto Alicia Spinnet's shoulder and he began to**

**snore.**

**The first board took nearly twenty minutes to explain, but there was another board under that, and a third under that one. Harry sank into a stupor as Wood droned on and on.**

"**So," said Wood, at long last, jerking Harry from a wistful fantasy about what he could be eating for breakfast at this very moment up at the castle. "Is that clear? Any questions?"**

"**I've got a question, Oliver," said George, who had woken with a start. "Why couldn't you have told us all this yesterday when we were awake?"**

"Hear hear, Dad," Fred said, snickering with most of the rest.

James looked mildly indignant, but even he had to admit that the best diagrams in the world weren't any use if your team wasn't awake to see them.

**Wood wasn't pleased.**

"**Now, listen here, you lot," he said, glowering at them all. "We should have won the Quidditch Cup last year. We're easily the best team. **

"That is very true," James pointed out, nodding emphatically.

**But unfortunately — owing to circumstances beyond our control —"**

"Yes, it is rather hard to predict when a mad man is planning on trying to take over the world," Fred nodded sympathetically.

"They just don't have any consideration at all for Quidditch schedules," James sighed, shaking his head in disappointment.

"But, I suppose with Harry Potter as your seeker, you really should plan for such occurrences," Fred added.

**Harry shifted guiltily in his seat. He had been unconscious in the hospital wing for the final match of the previous year, meaning that Gryffindor had been a player short and had suffered their worst defeat in three hundred years.**

"It wasn't your fault, Dad," Lily sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, I think saving the world is a bit more important than a Quidditch game," Teddy agreed, smiling.

**Wood took a moment to regain control of himself. Their last defeat was clearly still torturing him.**

"**So this year, we train harder than ever before. . . . Okay, let's go and put our new theories into practice!" Wood shouted, seizing his broomstick and leading the way out of the locker rooms. Stifflegged and still yawning, his team followed.**

**They had been in the locker room so long that the sun was up completely now, although remnants of mist hung over the grass in the stadium. As Harry walked onto the field, he saw Ron and Hermione sitting in the stands.**

"**Aren't you finished yet?" called Ron incredulously.**

A few people laughed hollowly. Not even close.

"**Haven't even started," said Harry, looking jealously at the toast and marmalade Ron and Hermione had brought out of the Great Hall. "Wood's been teaching us new moves."**

**He mounted his broomstick and kicked at the ground, soaring up into the air. The cool morning air whipped his face, waking him far more effectively than Wood's long talk. It felt wonderful to be back on the Quidditch field. He soared right around the stadium at full speed, racing Fred and George.**

Fred watched in bemusement as James bounced subconsciously with excitement, his fingers curling as if holding a broom handle. It wouldn't be long and James would be going through severe Quidditch withdrawals. Come to think of it, he himself was missing the never-ending Quidditch games they usually would be playing.

"**What's that funny clicking noise?" called Fred as they hurtled around the corner.**

**Harry looked into the stands. Colin was sitting in one of the highest seats, his camera raised, taking picture after picture, the sound strangely magnified in the deserted stadium.**

"**Look this way, Harry! This way!" he cried shrilly.**

"**Who's that?" said Fred.**

"**No idea," Harry lied, putting on a spurt of speed that took him as far away as possible from Colin.**

"Dad!" Lily said indignantly.

"Yeah, come on Dad, Colin's great!" James agreed.

"He's also Harry's first paparazzi," Teddy pointed out, laughing.

"**What's going on?" said Wood, frowning, as he skimmed through the air toward them. "Why's that first year taking pictures? I don't like it. He could be a Slytherin spy, trying to find out about our new training program."**

"Don't get any ideas Scorp," Albus grinned. "You're not getting word out of us next year."

"As if we'll need to spy," Scorpius said haughtily, though he was grinning too.

"Oh, believe me, you'll need to," James told him with a cocky smirk.

"**He's in Gryffindor," said Harry quickly.**

"**And the Slytherins don't need a spy, Oliver," said George.**

"**What makes you say that?" said Wood testily.**

"**Because they're here in person," said George, pointing.**

"Oh man!" Fred exclaimed dramatically.

"I sense a confrontation," James said in a good imitation of Professor Trelawney

**Several people in green robes were walking onto the field, broomsticks in their hands.**

"**I don't believe it!" Wood hissed in outrage. "I booked the field for today! We'll see about this!"**

**Wood shot toward the ground, landing rather harder than he meant to in his anger, staggering slightly as he dismounted. Harry, Fred, and George followed.**

"**Flint!" Wood bellowed at the Slytherin Captain. "This is our practice time! We got up specially! You can clear off now!"**

**Marcus Flint was even larger than Wood. He had a look of trollish cunning on his face as he replied, "Plenty of room for all of us, Wood."**

**Angelina, Alicia, and Katie had come over, too. There were no girls on the Slytherin team, who stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the Gryffindors, leering to a man.**

"**But I booked the field!" said Wood, positively spitting with rage. "I booked it!"**

"What were you saying about a confrontation?" Fred asked.

"It's a gift," James grinned, tapping his forehead.

"**Ah," said Flint. "But I've got a specially signed note here from Professor Snape. '**_**I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permissionto practice today on the Quidditch field owing to the need totrain their new Seeker.**_**' "**

"That's the biggest load of bull I've ever heard!" James spat angrily.

"It's completely ridiculous!" Rose agreed, seething at this play on the rules. "They have months to train their new players, that's what all that practice time is _for_! And besides, they can't be the only ones who have new players anyway!"

"They must have checked the field schedule," Fred spat bitterly.

"And only notes form Madam Hooch can override a booing!" Rose went on furiously. "That note is completely invalid!"

"Why don't you keep reading Rosie," Teddy suggested, thinking it would be better to get past this quickly.

"**You've got a new Seeker?" said Wood, distracted. "Where?"**

**And from behind the six large figures before them came a seventh, smaller boy, smirking all over his pale, pointed face. **

"Argh!" James groaned. "He's tainting the Quidditch parts!"

"Perfect," Scorpius sighed. "He's going to make a real prat of himself, here, I just know it."

Albus and Rose gave him sympathetic looks.

**It was Draco Malfoy.**

"**Aren't you Lucius Malfoy's son?" said Fred, looking at Malfoy with dislike.**

"Most unfortunately," Scorpius muttered under his breath. That was the reaction he got from everybody. All they saw was either Lucius Malfoy, the Death Eater, or Draco Malfoy, the humiliation of the purebloods, when they looked at Scorpius. Sins of the father, he thought a little bitterly.

"**Funny you should mention Draco's father," said Flint as the whole Slytherin team smiled still more broadly. **

"That's a frightening image," Fred said with a shudder.

"**Let me show you the generous gift he's made to the Slytherin team."**

James coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "Bribe!"

**All seven of them held out their broomsticks. Seven highly polished, brand-new handles and seven sets of fine gold lettering spelling the words **_**Nimbus Two Thousand and One **_**gleamed under the Gryffindors' noses in the early morning sun.**

"**Very latest model. Only came out last month," said Flint carelessly, flicking a speck of dust from the end of his own. **

"So that's why they went to all the trouble to crash Gryffindor's practice," Teddy said quietly. "They couldn't pass up a chance to show off their fancy new brooms, rub their new seeker in Harry's face, and get under all the Gryffindor's skins at the same time." He gave a short, hollow laugh. "Funny really. When you think about it, all their doing is showing off how easily they can be bought off."

"**I believe it outstrips the old Two Thousand series by a considerable amount. As for the old Cleansweeps" — he smiled nastily at Fred and George, who were both clutching Cleansweep Fives — "sweeps the board with them."**

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter how good the broom is, it's still the players that win the game," Fred said heatedly.

"Yeah, but fast brooms tend to help," James said miserably.

**None of the Gryffindor team could think of anything to say for a moment. Malfoy was smirking so broadly his cold eyes were reduced to slits.**

Albus glanced sideways at his friend, who was looking rather embarrassed by the whole affair. From everything they'd heard, Scorpius looked as much like his father as Albus did, but Albus had never appreciated how very _different _he was from Draco. For all their similar looks, Albus could not picture that particular smirk on Scorpius's face. Scorpius just wasn't the sneering sort of person. He hated the way his father was acting, how the entire upper class had trained their children to act. Scorpius might not see it, but Albus did; that difference spoke volumes about his character.

"**Oh, look," said Flint. "A field invasion."**

**Ron and Hermione were crossing the grass to see what was going on.**

Teddy frowned. He had a pretty good idea about what was going to happen next and he didn't like it one bit.

"**What's happening?" Ron asked Harry. "Why aren't you playing? And what's **_**he **_**doing here?"**

**He was looking at Malfoy, taking in his Slytherin Quidditch robes.**

"**I'm the new Slytherin Seeker, Weasley," said Malfoy, smugly.**

"**Everyone's just been admiring the brooms my father's bought our team."**

**Ron gaped, openmouthed, at the seven superb broomsticks in front of him.**

"**Good, aren't they?" said Malfoy smoothly. "But perhaps the Gryffindor team will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms, too. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives; I expect a museum would bid for them."**

**The Slytherin team howled with laughter.**

"Really hilarious," Rose muttered dryly.

"**At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to **_**buy **_**their way in," said Hermione sharply. "**_**They **_**got in on pure talent."**

"Hear hear!" James, Fred, Albus, Rose, and Hugo cheered emphatically.

"I've never been prouder to call her my aunt!" Fred said, wiping away a fake tear.

**The smug look on Malfoy's face flickered.**

Teddy winced in anticipation. This was the opening he'd been expecting.

"**No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood," he spat.**

Teddy, for all his foresight and expectation, couldn't stop himself from grinding his teeth together and clenching his fists so tightly his nails dug into his palms. The fact that a twelve-year-old kid was throwing something like that around made his skin crawl. It was sickening to think that _already _he had been thinking in terms of blood status, that he already considered Hermione scum simply because her parents were Muggles. That was thinking that bred so much violence and prejudice. It was a clear tell as to what kind of societal problems were already stiring. The enmity and scathing that Teddy was sure had dripped off o Draco's tongue as he delivered that insult rang in his head.

"Hang on," Rose said slowly. "Is he – mud blood," she emphasized each word. "Does that mean like 'dirty blood'? Because Mum's a Muggle-born?"

"Yes," Teddy ground out. "Your parents have talked to you about how the wars started?" he asked in a low, serious voice. "That it was this idea about blood purity and blood status that sparked so much violence? A lot of the purebloods – usually the rich, old families – thought they were better than everyone else because of their blood. They harbored all these old prejudices against Muggle-borns and half-bloods and Muggles in general, saw them as lower beings. That word represents all those ideals – and all the terrible crimes that were committed under them. It is a representation of the entire dark regime. That's why the reaction to it now is so strong. It's a truly foul thing."

A heavy silence met Teddy's explanation. Fred and James exchanged dark looks. Rose and Lily were staring at him with mouths slightly open. Albus, Hugo and Scorpius were looking rather sick again. Teddy wondered if he shouldn't have explained that word in such detail to them. The meaning would have been sufficient for the reading. But they needed to know this, he thought fiercely. They need to understand that it is a big deal and it does matter. Otherwise that whole war was fought for nothing and this sort of thing would just happen again. They _needed _toknow this. It was half the reason they were reading these books in the first place.

Scorpius had gone extremely white. That was _his _father carrying those ideals, _his _father labeling _Rose's _mother as a being dirty and beneath him. It shocked him like nothing else they had read. He couldn't escape the fact that his family was connected with the dark arts and the Death Eaters, but he had always seen the quietly regretful acknowledgement from his father and grandmother. This was the first time he had seen his father _reveling _in those views, actively participating in that kind of prejudice. It was only a word, but it said a thousand times more than just its definition.

The silence seemed to spool out as each of them absorbed exactly what had just transpired. Finally, Teddy said quietly, "Keep going, Rosie," and Rose cleared her throat and resumed reading in a slightly unsteady voice.

**Harry knew at once that Malfoy had said something really bad**

There were a few very low, very hollow barks of laughter.

**because there was an instant uproar at his words. Flint had to dive in front of Malfoy to stop Fred and George jumping on him, **

"He more than deserved it," Fred growled. His aunt was a hundred times better than that little scuzz ball.

**Alicia shrieked, "**_**How dare you**_**!", and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulled out his wand, yelling, "You'll pay for that one, Malfoy!" and pointed it furiously under Flint's arm at Malfoy's face.**

"I don't see this going well," James muttered half-heartedly.

"It's a noble thought, mate," Fred said, "But you've got a broken wand."

**A loud bang echoed around the stadium and a jet of green light shot out of the wrong end of Ron's wand, hitting him in the stomach and sending him reeling backward onto the grass.**

They all winced.

"**Ron! Ron! Are you all right?" squealed Hermione.**

**Ron opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead he gave an almighty belch and several slugs dribbled out of his mouth onto his lap.**

"Ewwwwwwww!" Lily squealed and everyone else made disgusted faces and gagging noises. All except Fred and James who exchanged looks, a mischievous glint in their eyes that nobody liked.

"Poor chap," Teddy said, shaking his head.

**The Slytherin team were paralyzed with laughter. **

"Jerks," Hugo huffed, crossing his arms.

**Flint was doubled up, hanging onto his new broomstick for support. Malfoy was on all fours, banging the ground with his fist. **

Scorpius grimaced, disliking his father's twelve –year-old self more than ever.

**The Gryffindors were gathered around Ron, who kept belching large, glistening slugs.**

"Do we really need that much detail?" Lily asked, looking slightly green.

**Nobody seemed to want to touch him.**

"Don't blame them," Rose muttered, making a face.

"**We'd better get him to Hagrid's, it's nearest," said Harry to Hermione, who nodded bravely, and the pair of them pulled Ron up by the arms.**

"At least he's got his friends to count on," Hugo mumbled.

"**What happened, Harry? What happened? Is he ill? But you can cure him, can't you?" Colin had run down from his seat and was now dancing alongside them as they left the field. Ron gave a huge heave and more slugs dribbled down his front.**

"**Oooh," said Colin, fascinated and raising his camera. "Can you hold him still, Harry?"**

"Not really the best time for a photo opportunity," Rose grumbled, but the fact that it was Colin stopped her from being really annoyed. There was just something about his bubbliness that she liked.

"**Get out of the way, Colin!" said Harry angrily. He and Hermione supported Ron out of the stadium and across the grounds toward the edge of the forest.**

"**Nearly there, Ron," said Hermione as the gamekeeper's cabin came into view. "You'll be all right in a minute — almost there —"**

**They were within twenty feet of Hagrid's house when the front door opened, but it wasn't Hagrid who emerged. Gilderoy Lockhart,**

"Not that git!" James exploded in annoyance. "He's got the worst timing in the world!"

**wearing robes of palest mauve today, came striding out.**

"**Quick, behind here," Harry hissed, dragging Ron behind a nearby bush.**

"I'm sure Dad appreciated that," Rose muttered.

"He probably did," Teddy said. "If Lockhart had spotted him, he'd have spent twenty minutes going on about how he'd cured a thousand of cases like that and then he might have even tried to lift the curse himself." Teddy shuddered at the thought of what might have happened. If the pixies were any indication…

**Hermione followed, somewhat reluctantly.**

Fred couldn't help but snort.

"**It's a simple matter if you know what you're doing!" Lockhart was saying loudly to Hagrid. "If you need help, you know where I am! I'll let you have a copy of my book. I'm surprised you haven't already got one — I'll sign one tonight and send it over. **

"Like Hagrid needs that rubbish," Hugo scoffed.

"Does he sign _everything_?" Fred asked incredulously.

**Well, good-bye!" And he strode away toward the castle.**

"Good riddance," James muttered.

**Harry waited until Lockhart was out of sight, then pulled Ron out of the bush and up to Hagrid's front door. They knocked urgently. Hagrid appeared at once, looking very grumpy, but his expression brightened when he saw who it was.**

"**Bin wonderin' when you'd come ter see me — come in, come in — thought you mighta bin Professor Lockhart back again —"**

"That's a true nightmare," James shuddered.

**Harry and Hermione supported Ron over the threshold into the one-roomed cabin, which had an enormous bed in one corner, a fire crackling merrily in the other. Hagrid didn't seem perturbed by Ron's slug problem, **

"Psh, it's only slugs," Fred said with a wave of his hands. "Nothing to be perturbed about."

**which Harry hastily explained as he lowered Ron into a chair.**

"**Better out than in," he said cheerfully, **

"That's my philosophy," Fred sniggered.

"You are so immature," Rose told him, rolling her eyes and reaching over to flick his ear.

"Hey!" he complained, clapping a hand to his flicked ear and scowling at Rose, but she had already gone back to reading.

**plunking a large copper basin in front of him. "Get 'em all up, Ron."**

"**I don't think there's anything to do except wait for it to stop," said Hermione anxiously, watching Ron bend over the basin. "That's a difficult curse to work at the best of times, but with a broken wand —"**

**Hagrid was bustling around making them tea. His boarhound, Fang, was slobbering over Harry.**

"**What did Lockhart want with you, Hagrid?" Harry asked, scratching Fang's ears.**

"**Givin' me advice on gettin' kelpies out of a well," growled Hagrid, moving a half-plucked rooster off his scrubbed table **

"Lovely," Lily said daintily.

**And setting down the teapot. "Like I don' know. An' bangin' on about some banshee he banished. If one word of it was true, I'll eat my kettle."**

"Almost makes you wish it were true," Fred said.

"_Almost_," James said.

**It was most unlike Hagrid to criticize a Hogwarts teacher, and Harry looked at him in surprise. Hermione, however, said in a voice somewhat higher than usual, "I think you're being a bit unfair. Professor Dumbledore obviously thought he was the best man for the job —"**

"And who was he picking from? A bunch of mountain trolls and Snape?" James said scathingly.

"**He was the **_**on'y **_**man for the job," said Hagrid, offering them a plate of treacle toffee, while Ron coughed squelchily into his basin.**

"**An' I mean the **_**on'y **_**one. Gettin' very difficult ter find anyone fer the Dark Arts job. People aren't too keen ter take it on, see. They're startin' ter think it's jinxed. No one's lasted long fer a while now. **

"Well, when you look at what happened to the last one.." Albus said, trailing off meaningfully.

**So tell me," said Hagrid, jerking his head at Ron. "Who was he tryin' ter curse?"**

"**Malfoy called Hermione something — it must've been really bad, because everyone went wild."**

"It _was _bad," Teddy said darkly.

"**It **_**was **_**bad," said Ron hoarsely, emerging over the tabletop looking pale and sweaty. "Malfoy called her 'Mudblood,' Hagrid —"**

**Ron dived out of sight again as a fresh wave of slugs made their appearance. Hagrid looked outraged.**

"**He didn'!" he growled at Hermione.**

"**He did," she said. "But I don't know what it means. I could tell it was really rude, of course —"**

There were some noises of incredulity at the understatement.

"It was way more than Rude," Rose hissed angrily.

"**It's about the most insulting thing he could think of," gasped Ron, coming back up. "Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born — you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards — like Malfoy's family — who think they're better than everyone else because they're what people call pure-blood."**

Scorpius's ears were burning. It was true that his family thought like that. Now that he thought about it, he could see the subtle things his father had done all his life, some things that even he himself had picked up. Nothing as bad as 'Mudblood', but the taint of prejudice was there now that he looked for it. It made him feel really sick. He wrapped an arm around his stomach and pressed his forehead into his knees.

Rose glanced at him with concern and Albus scooted around Rose to nudge his friend and give him a questioning look. But Scorpius barely noticed.\

**He gave a small burp, and a single slug fell into his outstretched hand. He threw it into the basin and continued, "I mean, the rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at all. Look at Neville Longbottom — he's pure-blood and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right way up."**

"Don't be mean," Lily snapped as James and Fred sniggered.

"**An' they haven't invented a spell our Hermione can' do," said Hagrid proudly, making Hermione go a brilliant shade of magenta.**

Hugo beamed. Albus looked sideways at Rose, hoping there chat hadn't been a complete waist. He was glad to see the hint of a smile on her face.

"**It's a disgusting thing to call someone," said Ron, **

"No kidding," Hugo mumbled.

**wiping his sweaty brow with a shaking hand. "Dirty blood, see. Common**

**blood. It's ridiculous. Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway. If we hadn't married Muggles we'd've died out."**

**He retched and ducked out of sight again.**

"**Well, I don' blame yeh fer tryin' ter curse him, Ron," said Hagrid loudly over the thuds of more slugs hitting the basin. "Bu' maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired. 'Spect Lucius Malfoy would've come marchin' up ter school if yeh'd cursed his son. Least yer not in trouble."**

"Think I'd rather have the detention and the satisfaction of cursing that smug smirk off his filthy mouth than be vomiting slugs," James commented.

**Harry would have pointed out that trouble didn't come much**

**worse than having slugs pouring out of your mouth, but he couldn't; Hagrid's treacle toffee had cemented his jaws together.**

"Armature," James sniggered.

"**Harry," said Hagrid abruptly as though struck by a sudden thought. "Gotta bone ter pick with yeh. I've heard you've bin givin' out signed photos. How come I haven't got one?"**

Fred and James exchanged broad grins.

"Hagrid's great!" James laughed.

**Furious, Harry wrenched his teeth apart.**

"**I have **_**not **_**been giving out signed photos," he said hotly. "If Lockhart's still spreading that around —"**

**But then he saw that Hagrid was laughing.**

"**I'm on'y jokin'," he said, patting Harry genially on the back and sending him face first into the table. **

"Good ol' Hagrid, "Albus chuckled fondly.

"**I knew yeh hadn't really. I told Lockhart yeh didn' need teh. Yer more famous than him without tryin'."**

"Oh, I'd pay good money to be able to see the look on his face when he heard that!" James laughed.

"**Bet he didn't like that," said Harry, sitting up and rubbing his chin.**

"**Don' think he did," said Hagrid, his eyes twinkling. "An' then I told him I'd never read one o' his books an' he decided ter go. Treacle toffee, Ron?" he added as Ron reappeared.**

"**No thanks," said Ron weakly. "Better not risk it."**

"Well, I suppose that's one plus to heaving up slugs," Fred said thoughtfully, " a good excuse to avoid Hagrid's cooking."

"**Come an' see what I've bin growin'," said Hagrid as Harry and Hermione finished the last of their tea.**

**In the small vegetable patch behind Hagrid's house were a dozen of the largest pumpkins Harry had ever seen. Each was the size of a large boulder.**

"**Gettin' on well, aren't they?" said Hagrid happily. "Fer the Halloween feast . . . should be big enough by then."**

"**What've you been feeding them?" said Harry.**

**Hagrid looked over his shoulder to check that they were alone.**

"**Well, I've bin givin' them — you know — a bit o' help —"**

**Harry noticed Hagrid's flowery pink umbrella leaning against the back wall of the cabin. Harry had had reason to believe before now that this umbrella was not all it looked; in fact, he had the strong impression that Hagrid's old school wand was concealed inside it. Hagrid wasn't supposed to use magic. He had been expelled from Hogwarts in his third year, but Harry had never found out why — **

"Not too many people have," Fred said sadly. He and James had spent their whole first year trying to get it out of them, but they had been utterly unsuccessful.

**any mention of the matter and Hagrid would clear his throat loudly and become mysteriously deaf until the subject was changed.**

"**An Engorgement Charm, I suppose?" said Hermione, halfway between disapproval and amusement. "Well, you've done a good job on them."**

"**That's what yer little sister said," said Hagrid, nodding at Ron. **

"Mum!" Lily said happily. "We haven't heard too much about her lately, have we?"

"**Met her jus' yesterday." Hagrid looked sideways at Harry, his beard twitching. "Said she was jus' lookin' round the grounds, but I reckon she was hopin' she might run inter someone else at my house." He winked at Harry. "If yeh ask me, **_**she **_**wouldn' say no ter a signed —"**

James, Albus, and Teddy were all howling with laughter by this point.

Rose ignored them, but she had an amused smile on her face all the same as she kept reading.

"**Oh, shut up," said Harry. Ron snorted with laughter and the ground was sprayed with slugs.**

"**Watch it!" Hagrid roared, pulling Ron away from his precious pumpkins.**

**It was nearly lunchtime and as Harry had only had one bit of treacle toffee since dawn, he was keen to go back to school to eat. They said good-bye to Hagrid and walked back up to the castle, Ron hiccoughing occasionally, but only bringing up two very small slugs.**

**They had barely set foot in the cool entrance hall when a voice rang out, "There you are, Potter — Weasley." Professor McGonagall was walking toward them, looking stern. **

"Never a good situation," Fred, James, Rose, and Albus all said at the same time.

"I'll bet she's gotten tired of having to say that sternly," Teddy laughed as the four of them looked at each other amusedly.

"**You will both do your detentions this evening."**

"**What're we doing, Professor?" said Ron, nervously suppressing a burp.**

"_**You **_**will be polishing the silver in the trophy room with Mr. Filch," said Professor McGonagall. "And no magic, Weasley — elbow grease."**

"Ooo, tough luck, mate," Fred winced sympathetically. It was McGonagall's favorite punishment for him, too.

**Ron gulped. Argus Filch, the caretaker, was loathed by every student in the school.**

"That's going to be written on his tomb stone," Teddy muttered.

"**And you, Potter, will be helping Professor Lockhart answer his fan mail," said Professor McGonagall.**

Everyone winced or groaned.

"That's just cruel!" James complained while Fred cracked up next to him. It had to be one of the worst punishments he'd ever heard of.

"**Oh n — Professor, can't I go and do the trophy room, too?" said Harry desperately.**

"Come on, Professor! Have a heart!" James begged.

"**Certainly not," said Professor McGonagall, raising her eyebrows.**

Fred snapped his fingers and James deflated, looking rather disappointed.

"**Professor Lockhart requested you particularly. **

More groans.

**Eight o'clock sharp, both of you."**

**Harry and Ron slouched into the Great Hall in states of deepest gloom, Hermione behind them, wearing a **_**well-you-did-breakschool-rules **_**sort of expression. **

"That's a very annoying expression," Albus said, nudging Rose pointedly.

Scorpius gave a half-hearted nod of agreement, his father still weighing heavily on his mind.

**Harry didn't enjoy his shepherd's pie as much as he'd thought. Both he and Ron felt they'd got the worse deal.**

"**Filch'll have me there all night," said Ron heavily. "No magic! There must be about a hundred cups in that room. I'm no good at Muggle cleaning."**

"You know, I think Uncle Harry still got it worse, having to be shut up in a room with _Lockhart _all night," Fred shuddered.

"**I'd swap anytime," said Harry hollowly. "I've had loads of practice with the Dursleys. **

The unexpected reminder drew a few growls form around the group.

**Answering Lockhart's fan mail . . . he'll be a nightmare. . . ."**

**Saturday afternoon seemed to melt away, and in what seemed like no time, it was five minutes to eight, and Harry was dragging his feet along the second-floor corridor to Lockhart's office. He gritted his teeth and knocked.**

**The door flew open at once. Lockhart beamed down at him.**

"**Ah, here's the scalawag!" **

"He did not just call Dad a _scalawag_," James asked incredulously while Fred laughed.

**he said. "Come in, Harry, come in —"**

**Shining brightly on the walls by the light of many candles were countless framed photographs of Lockhart. He had even signed a few of them. **

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Hugo mumbled while James and Fred pretended to gag and choke at the thought of being surrounded by beaming, winking Lockharts.

**Another large pile lay on his desk. **

"**You can address the envelopes!" Lockhart told Harry, as though this was a huge treat. **

"It's just what I've always wanted!" Fred said in a fluttery, high-pitched voice.

"**This first one's to Gladys Gudgeon, bless her — huge fan of mine —"**

**The minutes snailed by. Harry let Lockhart's voice wash over him, occasionally saying, "Mmm" and "Right" and "Yeah." Now and then he caught a phrase like, "Fame's a fickle friend, Harry," or "Celebrity is as celebrity does, remember that."**

"Does he think he's _mentoring _Dad, or something?" James asked disbelievingly.

"I reckon he fancies himself Harry's 'Guide to celebrity life'," Teddy snorted. "He'd love to tell everyone he was playing mentor to The-Boy-Who-Lived. He'd probably through in there how he saw himself in the kid and how Harry had come to see him as a _father-figure _or something like that. God, I just can't get over how much of an _idiot _he is."

The thought of Lockhart thinking he was stepping into the shoes of a parent just because it spiffed up his image made anger bubble in Teddy's stomach. He knew how important – and _sacred _really – that role was and Lockhart patting himself on the back because he slipped in at the right moments to give useless advice about _fame – _ugh! He couldn't stand it.

**The candles burned lower and lower, making the light dance over the many moving faces of Lockhart watching him. **

"Creepy!" Fred whispered in an eerie voice.

**Harry moved his aching hand over what felt like the thousandth envelope,**

**writing out Veronica Smethley's address. **_**It must be nearly time to leave, **_**Harry thought miserably, **_**please let it be nearly time. **_**. . .**

**And then he heard something — something quite apart from the spitting of the dying candles and Lockhart's prattle about his fans.**

**It was a voice, a voice to chill the bone marrow, a voice of breathtaking, ice-cold venom.**

Lily shivered and scooted closer to Teddy. The others exchanged slightly scared looks. Even Scorpius was shaken out of his reverie.

"_**Come **_**. . . **_**come to me. **_**. . . **_**Let me rip you. **_**. . . **_**Let me tear you. **_**. . . **_**Let me kill you. **_**. . ."**

Rose looked up from the book, decidedly sickened. Lily buried her face in Teddy's side. James made a strange sort of squeaky noise.

"That's…disturbing," Fred said, dead serious.

Albus nodded, bighting his lip as a shiver ran up his spine. He exchanged worried looks with Rose and Scorpius. What did it _mean_?

**Harry gave a huge jump and a large lilac blot appeared on Veronica Smethley's street.**

"_**What**_**?" he said loudly.**

"**I know!" said Lockhart. "Six solid months at the top of the best-seller list! Broke all records!"**

"Not what he's talking about!" Fred said in frustration, wanting an explanation of that voice.

"**No," said Harry frantically. "That voice!"**

"**Sorry?" said Lockhart, looking puzzled. "What voice?"**

"He didn't hear it?" Rose asked slowly, looking dubiously at the book.

"Is he going mad?" Hugo wondered.

"I don't think so," Teddy said quietly. But what it did mean, he had no idea. That voice scared him, he would admit that (to himself anyway). He didn't like it one bit.

"**That — that voice that said — didn't you hear it?"**

**Lockhart was looking at Harry in high astonishment.**

"**What **_**are **_**you talking about, Harry? Perhaps you're getting a little drowsy? Great Scott — look at the time! We've been here nearly four hours! I'd never have believed it — the time's flown, hasn't it?"**

"Not really," Fred mumbled.

**Harry didn't answer. He was straining his ears to hear the voice again, but there was no sound now except for Lockhart telling him he mustn't expect a treat like this every time he got detention. **

"Dear god, I hope not," James said fervently.

"I dunno how he just ignores all of this. If it was me, I'd be ripping my hair out," Fred said.

**Feeling dazed, Harry left.**

**It was so late that the Gryffindor common room was almost empty. Harry went straight up to the dormitory. Ron wasn't back yet. Harry pulled on his pajamas, got into bed, and waited. Half an hour later, Ron arrived, nursing his right arm and bringing a strong smell of polish into the darkened room.**

"**My muscles have all seized up," he groaned, sinking on his bed. "Fourteen times he made me buff up that Quidditch Cup before he was satisfied. And then I had another slug attack all over a Special Award for Services to the School. Took ages to get the slime off. . . .**

Fred moaned as traumatizing memories of detention cleaning the trophy room flashed across his mind.

**How was it with Lockhart?"**

**Keeping his voice low so as not to wake Neville, Dean, and Seamus, Harry told Ron exactly what he had heard.**

"**And Lockhart said he couldn't hear it?" said Ron. Harry could see him frowning in the moonlight. "D'you think he was lying? But I don't get it — even someone invisible would've had to open the door."**

"**I know," said Harry, lying back in his four-poster and staring at the canopy above him. "I don't get it either."**

"Nor do I," Rose said, shivering as she put the book down. "What was it? Harry just imagining, or…. Something else?"

"I couldn't tell you," Teddy said uncomfortably.

" 'suppose it was about time for the mystery to set in," Fred sighed. "Whatever it is probably has to do with the Chamber of Secrets."

"But what _is _the Chamber of Secrets?" Hugo asked.

"I don't know exactly," Teddy told him. "Reckon we'll know by the end of this book. Who wants to keep going?"

"I will, I suppose," Albus said, reaching out to pick the book up, hoping they'd get some more information about that creepy voice. It was freaking him out a little bit. But he supposed they had a long way to go before that mystery was revealed. At the very least, reading might stop him from glancing into the gloomy trees behind him every five minutes.


	9. The Deathday Party

**Chapter 9-The Deathday Party**

Albus turned the page and started to read.

**Chapter Eight The Deathday Party**

"Well, that sounds cheerful," Rose said dryly.

Fred and James exchanged a meaningful look and as one let out an agonizing groan.

"What's the matter with you two?" Teddy asked, slightly alarmed.

"Haven't we already suffered enough?" Fred exclaimed, thrusting his hands skyward.

"I just want to forget! Is that too much to ask?" cried James in his customary over-dramatic tone.

"Oi," Rose snapped. "What's your problem?"

"Last January," Fred gulped, as though he had to force out every word. "Last January we got roped into going to – to –"

"The Fat Friar's Deathday party," James finished in a hush. "It was awful! Freezing and full of depressing dead people who just _had _to explain to you why they had an arrow sticking out of their forehead. Now one or two of those stories are cool, but twenty's enough to make you fear sharp objects."

"And the food is all rotten and gross," Fred added.

"I couldn't look at salmon without having flashbacks for weeks," James nodded solemnly.

"And don't even mention the music!"

"It's not music, it's the sound torture of noise."

"The things we do for a distraction," Fred lamented.

"A word to the wise," James began sagely. "If ever you are in need of a ghost's assistance, first inquire about when his deathday is."

"And as if living through one wasn't bad enough, now we've got to read about it, too!" Fred complained.

"What is a deathday party?" Hugo asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"I'd assume it's the opposite of a birthday party," Rose said patiently to her little brother. "Ghosts celebrating the day they died."

"Why?" Hugo asked. "Doesn't sound like something I'd want to celebrate. Sounds dead depressing."

"Your irony slays me," Rose said sarcastically. Then she turned to Fred and James. "I think it would be fascinating to attend a deathday party. How many living people ever have the opportunity to observe ghost culture like that?"

"You say that _now_," James scoffed. "But I'd like to hear your opinion after you've actually been to a deathday party."

"Whatever. Get on with it, Al, or we'll be here all night," Rose instructed.

**October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Her Pepperup Potion worked instantly, though it left the drinker smoking at the ears for several hours afterward. **

"That can lead to interesting things," Fred snickered, remembering the last cold season at Hogwarts.

**Ginny Weasley, who had been looking pale, was bullied into taking some by Percy. The steam pouring from under her vivid hair gave the impression that her whole head was on fire.**

"One of the reasons I hate taking it," Rose muttered, while Fred and James chortled anew.

**Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid's pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds. Oliver Wood's enthusiasm for regular training sessions, however, was not dampened, **

"Of course!" James said enthusiastically. "No decent captain cancels practice because of weather. The game could very well be in those conditions and a good team can fly in anything."

"Unless they end up with pneumonia," Rose muttered.

"What's your point?" James asked blankly.

Rose shook her head in exasperation.

**which was why Harry was to be found, late one stormy Saturday afternoon a few days before Halloween, returning to Gryffindor Tower, drenched to the skin and splattered with mud.**

**Even aside from the rain and wind it hadn't been a happy practice session. Fred and George, who had been spying on the Slytherin team, had seen for themselves the speed of those new Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones. They reported that the Slytherin team was no more than seven greenish blurs, shooting through the air like missiles.**

"Don't worry," James said, though he did look kind of worried. "Like Hermione said, they had to buy their way in. Gryffindor's got talent on their side."

"Yeah, but talent doesn't do a lot of good if you can barely see your opponent," Fred said glumly.

**As Harry squelched along the deserted corridor he came across somebody who looked just as preoccupied as he was. Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor Tower, was staring morosely out of a window, muttering under his breath, ". . . don't fulfill their requirements. . . half an inch, if that . . ."**

"The Headless Hunt," Fred said knowingly, seeing the puzzles looks on everyone else's faces.

"That's all he could talk about at the Friar's party," James explained. "I wonder how long he's been trying to get in there."

"I think the real question is how long he'll keep trying, even though it says right in his name that he's _nearly _headless," Fred mused.

"Probably forever," James said thoughtfully. "Ghosts haven't got much else to do with themselves, have they?"

"What's the Headless Hunt?" Albus inquired, but Fred and James only exchanged smirks so he decided the book would provide a better answer.

"**Hello, Nick," said Harry.**

"**Hello, hello," said Nearly Headless Nick, starting and looking round. He wore a dashing, plumed hat on his long curly hair, and a tunic with a ruff, which concealed the fact that his neck was almost completely severed. He was pale as smoke, and Harry could see right through him to the dark sky and torrential rain outside.**

"**You look troubled, young Potter," said Nick, folding a transparent letter as he spoke and tucking it inside his doublet.**

"**So do you," said Harry.**

"**Ah," Nearly Headless Nick waved an elegant hand, "a matter of no importance. . . . It's not as though I really wanted to join. . . .**

"Liar!" James coughed.

**Thought I'd apply, but apparently I 'don't fulfill requirements' —" **

**In spite of his airy tone, there was a look of great bitterness on his face.**

"**But you would think, wouldn't you," he erupted suddenly, pulling the letter back out of his pocket, "that getting hit forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless Hunt?"**

"I think forty-six might have done it," James said thoughtfully.

"If only," Fred sighed.

"**Oh — yes," said Harry, who was obviously supposed to agree.**

"**I mean, nobody wishes more than I do that it had all been quick and clean, and my head had come off properly, I mean, it would have saved me a great deal of pain and ridicule. **

"Oh, Nick,: Lily whimpered sympathetically.

**However —" Nearly Headless Nick shook his letter open and read furiously:**

" '_**We can only accept huntsmen whose heads have parted company with their bodies. You will appreciate that it would be impossible otherwise for members to participate in hunt activities such as Horseback Head-Juggling and Head Polo. It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must inform you that you do not fulfill our requirements. With very best wishes, Sir**_

_**Patrick Delaney-Podmore**_**.' "**

"You know, they do have a point thought," Rose sighed.

"But they still could accept him," Lily huffed. "Nick could be like an honorary member or something. It's mean to just leave him out when he's so close."

**Fuming, Nearly Headless Nick stuffed the letter away.**

"**Half an inch of skin and sinew holding my neck on, Harry! Most people would think that's good and beheaded, but oh, no, it's not enough for Sir Properly Decapitated-Podmore."**

"That would be a great name," Fred laughed.

"What is it with all these sir guys having hyphened names, anyway?" James asked, also laughing at Nick's comment.

**Nearly Headless Nick took several deep breaths and then said, in a far calmer tone, "So — what's bothering you? Anything I can do?"**

"**No," said Harry. "Not unless you know where we can get seven free Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones for our match against Sly —"**

**The rest of Harry's sentence was drowned out by a high-pitched mewling from somewhere near his ankles. **

"Oh no!" James breathed, blanching.

"Get out of there, now," Teddy advised. _**Bloody cat **_**he thought bitterly. She'd gotten him more detentions than he could count. **

"**Filch really hates mud," Fred said from experience. **

**He looked down and found himself gazing into a pair of lamp-like yellow eyes. **

Teddy shuddered at the image.

**It was Mrs. Norris, the skeletal gray cat who was used by the caretaker, Argus Filch, as a sort of deputy in his endless battle against students.**

"**You'd better get out of here, Harry," said Nick quickly. **

"Yes, listen to him," James urged. The less he had to hear about Flitch, the happier he would be.

"**Filch isn't in a good mood **

"Is he ever?" Albus wondered.

"The thought of Filch in a good mood is disturbing," said Fred, shivering.

— **he's got the flu and some third years accidentally plastered frog brains all over the ceiling in dungeon five. He's been cleaning all morning, and if he sees you dripping mud all over the place —"**

"You might not make it out alive," James finished in a grave voice.

Albus couldn't help but gulp, recalling all the horror stories Fred and James had told him about Filch, even if he was ninety percent sure they were made-up.

"**Right," said Harry, backing away from the accusing stare of Mrs. Norris, but not quickly enough. Drawn to the spot by the mysterious power that seemed to connect him with his foul cat, Argus Filch burst suddenly through a tapestry to Harry's right, wheezing and looking wildly about for the rule-breaker. There was a thick tartan scarf bound around his head, and his nose was unusually purple.**

"Ew," Rose said delicately.

"**Filth!" he shouted, his jowls aquiver, his eyes popping alarmingly as he pointed at the muddy puddle that had dripped from Harry's Quidditch robes. "Mess and muck everywhere! I've had enough of it, I tell you! **

"Then he ought to find a different job," Lily said loftily.

**Follow me, Potter!"**

**So Harry waved a gloomy good-bye to Nearly Headless Nick and followed Filch back downstairs, doubling the number of muddy footprints on the floor.**

Teddy rolled his eyes. "The man is ridiculous," he huffed. "Getting mud on the floor isn't a crime."

**Harry had never been inside Filch's office before; it was a place most students avoided. The room was dingy and windowless, lit by a single oil lamp dangling from the low ceiling. A faint smell of fried fish lingered about the place. Wooden filing cabinets stood around the walls; from their labels, Harry could see that they contained details of every pupil Filch had ever punished. Fred and George Weasley had an entire drawer to themselves. **

Fred grinned proudly and slapped James a high five.

**A highly polished collection of chains and manacles hung on the wall behind Filch's desk.**

"That's really creepy," Rose said, making a face.

"I think McGonagall finally made him get rid of those," Teddy reassured her.

**It was common knowledge that he was always begging Dumbledore to let him suspend students by their ankles from the ceiling.**

**Filch grabbed a quill from a pot on his desk and began shuffling around looking for parchment.**

"Ha! I _knew _you were lying about that Pigmy Puff farm!" Albus couldn't stop himself from exclaiming gleefully, pointing an accusatory finger at James.

"This was twenty five years ago, Al!" James said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "Everyone knows he didn't start that up for at least another ten years!"

"No he didn't," Albus huffed.

"He did, too. When we get back you can see for yourself," James smirked. "All you've got to do is get caught and taken to his office."

"I thought we already taught you not to listen to a word that comes out of his mouth," Teddy said to Albus, rolling his eyes at James.

"Right," Albus mumbled, returning to the book. He knew better than to listen to James most of the time, but James was right just enough times to make it hard for Albus to ignore his older brother. And besides, they wouldn't have found the books if he just ignored James completely.

"**Dung," he muttered furiously, "great sizzling dragon bogies . . . frog brains . . . rat intestines . . . I've had enough of it . . . make an **_**example **_**. . . where's the form . . . yes . . ."**

"He can't be allowed to do that," Rose said indignantly. "Make an example by giving detention for something Harry couldn't help!"

"I try not to figure out the way his mind works," Teddy grimaced.

**He retrieved a large roll of parchment from his desk drawer and stretched it out in front of him, dipping his long black quill into the ink pot.**

"_**Name **_**. . . Harry Potter. **_**Crime **_**. . ."**

"**It was only a bit of mud!" said Harry.**

"**It's only a bit of mud to you, boy, but to me it's an extra hour scrubbing!" **

"But that's what he gets paid for!" Rose burst out, practically chewing her tongue with indignation.

**shouted Filch, a drip shivering unpleasantly at the end of his bulbous nose. "**_**Crime **_**. . . befouling the castle . . . **_**suggestedsentence **_**. . ."**

**Dabbing at his streaming nose, Filch squinted unpleasantly at Harry, who waited with bated breath for his sentence to fall.**

**But as Filch lowered his quill, there was a great BANG! on the ceiling of the office, which made the oil lamp rattle.**

"**PEEVES!" Filch roared, flinging down his quill in a transport of rage. "I'll have you this time, I'll have you!"**

"Excellent timing!" James beamed approvingly.

**And without a backward glance at Harry, Filch ran flat-footed from the office, Mrs. Norris streaking alongside him.**

**Peeves was the school poltergeist, a grinning, airborne menace who lived to cause havoc and distress. **

"An admirable post, he keeps," said Fred appreciatively.

**Harry didn't much like Peeves, **

"Uncle Harry!" Fred spluttered, a look of great indignation and reproach on his face. "He just saved your neck! How can you say that about him?"

"Well, he did make things kind of difficult for Dad last year," Albus pointed out, and flinched at the look Fred sent his way.

"Mate, I know Peeves likes you especially, but even you've got to admit he is a pain sometimes," James whispered.

"Yeah, but somebody ought to stick up for him," Fred whispered back.

"Why?"James shot back. "It's not like his feelings are hurt. He thrives off of people cursing him out."

"All the same," Fred returned with a shrug.

**but couldn't help feeling grateful for his timing. **

"At least he can appreciate it," Fred grumbled.

**Hopefully, whatever Peeves had done (and it sounded as though he'd wrecked something very big this time) would distract Filch from Harry.**

**Thinking that he should probably wait for Filch to come back, Harry sank into a moth-eaten chair next to the desk. **

"What!" James exploded while the others adopted similarly disbelieving expressions. "Who _waits around _in _Filch's office_? He's mad!"

"I know Harry doesn't like taking advantage of people, but seriously…" Teddy said incredulously.

"Under no circumstances should any of you emulate this behavior," Fred told Hugo, Lily, Albus, Rose, and Scorpius forcefully.

"Not unless your masochistic," James added, still shaking his head with disgust.

**There was only one thing on it apart from his half-completed form: a large, glossy, purple envelope with silver lettering on the front. With a quick**

**glance at the door to check that Filch wasn't on his way back, Harry picked up the envelope and read:**

**KWIKSPELL**

**A Correspondence Course in Beginners' Magic**

Fred raised his eyebrows. Could this mean what he thought it did?

**Intrigued, Harry flicked the envelope open and pulled out the sheaf of parchment inside. More curly silver writing on the front page said:**

**Feel out of step in the world of modern magic? Find yourself making excuses not to perform simple spells? Ever been taunted for your woeful wandwork?**

**There is an answer!**

**Kwikspell is an all-new, fail-safe, quick-result, easy-learn course. Hundreds of witches and wizards have benefited from the Kwikspell method!**

**Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes:**

"**I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke! Now, after a Kwikspell course, I am the center of attention at parties and friends beg for the recipe of my Scintillation Solution!"**

**Warlock D. J. Prod of Didsbury says:**

"**My wife used to sneer at my feeble charms, but one month into your fabulous Kwikspell course and I succeeded in turning her into a yak!**

**Thank you, Kwikspell!"**

"Isn't that fantastic," Rose said sarcastically. "Very romantic."

"You wouldn't enjoy being a Yack?" Albus asked innocently, to which she replied by smacking his arm lightly.

**Fascinated, Harry thumbed through the rest of the envelope's contents. Why on earth did Filch want a Kwikspell course? **

"Why indeed," Fred smirked while James began to snigger.

**Did this mean he wasn't a proper wizard? **

"It has to!" Fred burst out, sniggering with James.

"You mean he's a squib?" Lily asked.

"It look like it," Albus agreed.

"And it's not something to laugh about!" Rose shot at Fred and James. "Squibs have a hard lot. Imagine if you grew up with magic and everyone you know could use it, but you couldn't, hm?"

"Rosie's right," Teddy agreed, but he couldn't stop the smirk that spread across his own face. "It's not really something to laugh about. But as it's Filch…" and began to snicker too.

"Honestly," Rose said, giving up on them.

But as Albus kept reading, and Teddy, Fred, and James kept sniggering, Rose glanced sideways at Scorpius. He hadn't said anything since the last chapter and it was starting to worry her. She could tell it was getting to Al too. Scorpius sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, staring blankly off into space. Rose edged a little closer to him and cautiously lay a hand on his arm. Scorpius flinched and looked around at her. She raised one eyebrow and he just shook his head and dropped his chin back to his folded arms. Rose sighed inwardly and let it drop. If there was anybody better at brooding than Al when he was really in the mood, it was Scorpius. And Rose didn't know which buttons to push with Scorp like she did with Al.

**Harry was just reading "Lesson One: Holding Your Wand (Some Useful Tips)" when shuffling footsteps outside told him Filch was coming back. Stuffing the parchment back into the envelope, Harry threw it back onto the**

**desk just as the door opened.**

**Filch was looking triumphant.**

"**That vanishing cabinet was extremely valuable!" he was saying gleefully to Mrs. Norris. "We'll have Peeves out this time, my sweet —"**

**His eyes fell on Harry and then darted to the Kwikspell envelope, which, Harry realized too late, was lying two feet away from where it had started.**

Fred winced. "Always gotta be careful about that."

"Filch is going to kill him now," James groaned.

**Filch's pasty face went brick red. Harry braced himself for a tidal wave of fury. Filch hobbled across to his desk, snatched up the envelope, and threw it into a drawer.**

"**Have you — did you read — ?" he sputtered.**

"**No," Harry lied quickly.**

**Filch's knobbly hands were twisting together.**

"**If I thought you'd read my private — not that it's mine — for a friend — be that as it may — however —"**

"Or he might have a stroke," Fred said slowly.

"'For a friend'," James scoffed, shaking his head. "That excuse never works. Ever."

**Harry was staring at him, alarmed; Filch had never looked madder. His eyes were popping, a tic was going in one of his pouchy cheeks, and the tartan scarf didn't help.**

"That sounds like a scarring image," Fred shuddered.

"**Very well — go — and don't breathe a word — not that — however, if you didn't read — go now, I have to write up Peeves' report — go —"**

"I don't believe it," James gaped. "He hung out in Filch's office when he _should _have been running for the hills, and he _still _got out without detention! That's unheard of!"

"Dad has the strangest luck I've ever heard of," Albus muttered.

**Amazed at his luck, Harry sped out of the office, up the corridor, and back upstairs. To escape from Filch's office without punishment was probably some kind of school record.**

"To escape like that, probably," Fred said, shaking his head.

"**Harry! Harry! Did it work?"**

**Nearly Headless Nick came gliding out of a him, Harry could see the wreckage of a large black-and-gold cabinet that appeared to have been dropped from a great height.**

"**I persuaded Peeves to crash it right over Filch's office," said Nick eagerly. "Thought it might distract him —"**

"Nick did that?" Fred asked, new respect for the ghost in his voice.

"We ought to go to _him _next time," James muttered.

"**Was that you?" said Harry gratefully. "Yeah, it worked, **

"Not the way I think he intended it to… but all's well that ends well, I suppose." James interjected.

**I didn't even get detention. Thanks, Nick!"**

**They set off up the corridor together. Nearly Headless Nick, Harry noticed, was still holding Sir Patrick's rejection letter.**

"**I wish there was something I could do for you about the Headless Hunt," Harry said.**

**Nearly Headless Nick stopped in his tracks and Harry walked right through him. He wished he hadn't; it was like stepping through an icy shower.**

Rose grimaced, she'd done it before and it wasn't pleasant.

"**But there **_**is **_**something you could do for me," said Nick excitedly.**

Fred groaned. "It's a trap! Don't fall for it!"

"**Harry — would I be asking too much — but no, you wouldn't want —"**

"Of course, play the guilt card," James grumbled. That was how the friar got them roped into it.

"**What is it?" said Harry.**

"**Well, this Halloween will be my five hundredth deathday," said Nearly Headless Nick, drawing himself up and looking dignified.**

"Here it comes," Fred sighed, remembering all too well how it went.

"**Oh," said Harry, not sure whether he should look sorry or happy about this. "Right."**

"**I'm holding a party down in one of the roomier dungeons. Friends will be coming from all over the country. It would be such an **_**honor **_**if you would attend. Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger would be most welcome, too, of course — but I daresay you'd rather go to the school feast?" He watched Harry on tenterhooks.**

"And now, Dad being Dad, can't refuse," said James.

"I wouldn't be talking, we didn't refuse either," Fred muttered in his ear.

James made a face. "The Friar's harder to turn down."

"Whatever makes you feel better," Fred chuckled.

"**No," said Harry quickly, "I'll come —"**

"**My dear boy! Harry Potter, at my deathday party! And" — he hesitated, looking excited — "do you think you could **_**possibly**_** mention to Sir Patrick how **_**very **_**frightening and impressive you find me?"**

"**Of — of course," said Harry.**

**Nearly Headless Nick beamed at him.**

"The image of very frightening and impressive," Fred drawled, making James snigger.

"**A deathday party?" said Hermione keenly when Harry had changed at last and joined her and Ron in the common room. "I bet there aren't many living people who can say they've been to one of those —**

"Unfortunately, we're part of the not many," James sighed.

**it'll be fascinating!"**

"See?" Rose said defensively. "I'm not the only one who thinks so."

"It's your mum, it doesn't count," Fred said, waving away the comment.

"**Why would anyone want to celebrate the day they died?" said Ron, who was halfway through his Potions homework and grumpy. "Sounds dead depressing to me. . . ."**

"So that's where you get it from," Rose sighed, looking over at her brother.

"You lot are scarily like your parents sometimes," Teddy commented in amusement.

**Rain was still lashing the windows, which were now inky black, but inside all looked bright and cheerful. The firelight glowed over the countless squashy armchairs where people sat reading, talking, doing homework or, in the case of Fred and George Weasley, trying to find out what would happen if you fed a Filibuster firework to a salamander. **

"Awesome!" Fred and James chorused as the others laughed. Even Scorpius couldn't help but crack a smile.

**Fred had "rescued" the brilliant orange, fire-dwelling lizard from a Care of Magical Creatures class and it was now smoldering gently on a table surrounded by a knot of curious people.**

**Harry was at the point of telling Ron and Hermione about Filch and the Kwikspell course when the salamander suddenly whizzed into the air, emitting loud sparks and bangs as it whirled wildly round the room. **

"Awesome!" Fred and James repeated with even more enthusiasm.

**The sight of Percy bellowing himself hoarse at Fred and George, the spectacular display of tangerine stars showering from the salamander's mouth, and its escape into the fire, with accompanying explosions, drove both Filch and the Kwikspell envelope from Harry's mind.**

Everyone was practically howling with laughter by this point.

"The twins were geniuses!" James exclaimed.

"Too right!" Fred agreed, beaming.

**By the time Halloween arrived, Harry was regretting his rash promise to go to the deathday party. **

"I'll bet," James muttered.

**The rest of the school was happily anticipating their Halloween feast; the Great Hall had been decorated with the usual live bats, Hagrid's vast pumpkins had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in, and there were rumors that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing**

**skeletons for the entertainment.**

"**A promise is a promise," Hermione reminded Harry bossily.**

"She sounds like you," Albus said to Rose.

"Well, if you promise something you ought to keep your word," Rose sniffed. "_No matter what_," she added giving him a pointedly look.

"I _did _keep my word, remember?" Albus said, holding up his hands.

"What's this all about?" Teddy asked, looking curious.

"Nothing!" both Rose and Albus said too quickly, making Scorpius snort.

"Right," Teddy said slowly, raising an eyebrow. "You lot have got a lot of secrets."

"**You **_**said **_**you'd go to the deathday party."**

**So at seven o'clock, Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked straight past the doorway to the packed Great Hall, which was glittering invitingly with gold plates and candles, and directed their steps instead toward the dungeons.**

**The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick's party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful: These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. **

"Sounds creepy," Hugo mumbled, shivering.

**The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Harry shivered and drew his robes tightly around him, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.**

Fred and James winced, rubbing their ears at the memory and everyone else grimaced.

"**Is that supposed to be **_**music**_**?" Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.**

"**My dear friends," he said mournfully. "Welcome, welcome . . . so pleased you could come. . . ."**

**He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside. It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, **

"Did you say _saws_, Al?" Lily asked incredulously.

"Er, yeah."

"How can saws me musical?" Hugo asked.

"It didn't sound like they were," Rose pointed out.

**played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.**

"**Shall we have a look around?" Harry suggested, wanting to warm up his feet.**

"**Careful not to walk through anyone," said Ron nervously, **

Rose shivered, thinking how difficult that would be – and how cold it would be if you messed up one too many times and walked through people.

**and they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group**

**of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. **

"Oh, the memories," James shuddered.

"It sounds fascinating, though," Rose said, eyes gleaming. "Think about it! All those people have stories! They're probably all from different time periods and parts of the country. I've never thought too much about ghosts outside of Hogwarts. I wonder –"

"Al, keep reading, I'm begging you," Fred interrupted, ignoring Rose's glare.

She crossed her arms, comforting herself by thinking she'd raid her mother's library for a book about ghosts as soon as she could.

**Harry wasn't surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.**

"Now he is creepy," Rose shivered.

"**Oh, no," said Hermione, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle —"**

Rose made a face, thinking she didn't blame her mother for running the other way.

"Who?" chorused all the boys (except Teddy, who had had to listen to Victoire and his other friends who happened to be girls complain about her for years).

"Believe me, be glad you don't have to deal with her," Rose told them. "I think you'll see why in a bit."

"**Who?" said Harry as they backtracked quickly.**

"**She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," said Hermione.**

"Well that explains why I've never heard of her," Fred said gruffly.

"She haunts a _toilet_?" Hugo asked, the corners of his mouth twitching up as he tried not to laugh.

Rose gave him a 'grow up' sort of look, but nodded. "Yes. And she's the most depressing ghost I've ever met. Honestly."

"**She haunts a **_**toilet**_**?"**

"**Yes. It's been out-of-order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it; it's awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you —"**

"Well that's a bit awkward," Fred said.

"Honestly, Mum," Hugo mumbled, looking embarrassed.

"Remind me to avoid ever going in there," Lily said to Rose.

"Believe me, go in there once and you won't need to be reminded," Rose assured her.

"**Look, food!" said Ron.**

"Smooth subject-change," James sniggered.

"I swear that's all that goes through your head sometimes," Rose shot at him.

**On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black velvet. They approached it eagerly but next moment had stopped in their tracks, horrified. **

"It is pretty horrible," Fred nodded, cringing.

**The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and, in pride of place, an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words, Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington died 31st October, 1492**

"Ugh! That's disgusting!" Lily exclaimed, gagging. Hugo looked a little sick.

Fred and James only nodded grimly.

**Harry watched, amazed, as a portly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.**

"**Can you taste it if you walk through it?" Harry asked him.**

"**Almost," said the ghost sadly, and he drifted away.**

"I definitely couldn't be a ghost," James said fervently.

"But isn't it fascinating!" Rose said eagerly. "I wonder how the senses work for ghosts..." she trailed off, renewed excitement surging through her. It had been far too long since she'd researched something.

"**I expect they've let it rot to give it a stronger flavor," said Hermione knowledgeably, pinching her nose and leaning closer to look at the putrid haggis.**

"**Can we move? I feel sick," said Ron.**

**They had barely turned around, however, when a little man swooped suddenly from under the table and came to a halt in midair before them.**

"**Hello, Peeves," said Harry cautiously.**

**Unlike the ghosts around them, Peeves the Poltergeist was the very reverse of pale and transparent. He was wearing a bright orange party hat, a revolving bow tie, and a broad grin on his wide, wicked face.**

"**Nibbles?" he said sweetly, offering them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus.**

"**No thanks," said Hermione.**

"**Heard you talking about poor Myrtle," said Peeves, his eyes dancing. "**_**Rude **_**you was about poor Myrtle." He took a deep breath and bellowed, "OY! MYRTLE!"**

"Oh no," Rose groaned. "He's going to tell her what Mum said."

"It's not exactly nice, but why are you acting like it's the worst thing in the world?" Albus asked her in confusion.

"Haven't you been paying attention at all? She'll have a tantrum and practically flood out Hogwarts," Rose explained.

"**Oh, no, Peeves, don't tell her what I said, she'll be really upset," Hermione whispered frantically. "I didn't mean it, I don't mind her — er, hello, Myrtle."**

**The squat ghost of a girl had glided over. She had the glummest face Harry had ever seen, half-hidden behind lank hair and thick, pearly spectacles.**

"**What?" she said sulkily.**

"**How are you, Myrtle?" said Hermione in a falsely bright voice. "It's nice to see you out of the toilet."**

Hugo snorted. Lily scowled at him.

**Myrtle sniffed.**

"**Miss Granger was just talking about you —" said Peeves slyly in Myrtle's ear.**

"**Just saying — saying — how nice you look tonight," said Hermione, glaring at Peeves.**

"Sure she was," said Fred, rolling his eyes.

**Myrtle eyed Hermione suspiciously.**

"**You're making fun of me," she said, silver tears welling rapidly in her small, see-through eyes.**

"She's – er – kind of sensitive, huh?" Albus pointed out unnecessarily.

"You have no idea," Rose told him tiredly. "You can't say anything around her without her bursting into tears and if you _don't _say anything she gets upset at being ignored."

"Touchy," Hugo mumbled.

"**No — honestly — didn't I just say how nice Myrtle's looking?" said Hermione, nudging Harry and Ron painfully in the ribs.**

"**Oh, yeah —"**

"**She did —"**

"Really convincing," Teddy snorted.

"**Don't lie to me," Myrtle gasped, tears now flooding down her face, while Peeves chuckled happily over her shoulder. "D'you think I don't know what people call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"**

"Well, it's her parents' fault for giving her such an alliteration-able name," Fred pointed out.

"And it sounds like they're all pretty accurate nicknames," James added.

"**You've forgotten pimply," Peeves hissed in her ear.**

**Moaning Myrtle burst into anguished sobs and fled from the dungeon. Peeves shot after her, pelting her with moldy peanuts, yelling, "**_**Pimply**_**! **_**Pimply**_**!"**

"That is a bit harsh of him," Rose sighed. "She might not be so mopey if Peeves didn't give her a hard time."

"I feel a bit sorry for her," Lily said sadly.

"I did too, at first, but she doesn't respond at all to comforting," Rose told her.

"**Oh, dear," said Hermione sadly.**

**Nearly Headless Nick now drifted toward them through the crowd.**

"**Enjoying yourselves?"**

"**Oh, yes," they lied.**

"How could they not after chatting with Moaning Myrtle?" Fred asked in mock astonishment.

"**Not a bad turnout," said Nearly Headless Nick proudly. "The Wailing Widow came all the way up from Kent. . . . It's nearly time for my speech, I'd better go and warn the orchestra. . . ."**

**The orchestra, however, stopped playing at that very moment. They, and everyone else in the dungeon, fell silent, looking around in excitement, as a hunting horn sounded.**

"**Oh, here we go," said Nearly Headless Nick bitterly.**

**Through the dungeon wall burst a dozen ghost horses, each ridden by a headless horseman. The assembly clapped wildly; Harry started to clap, too, but stopped quickly at the sight of Nick's face.**

**The horses galloped into the middle of the dance floor and halted, rearing and plunging. At the front of the pack was a large ghost who held his bearded head under his arm, from which position he was blowing the horn. The ghost leapt down, lifted his head high in the air so he could see over the crowd (everyone laughed), and strode over to Nearly Headless Nick, squashing his head back onto his neck.**

"The Headless Hunt, I presume?" Albus inquired.

"Yup," Fred confirmed.

"**Nick!" he roared. "How are you? Head still hanging in there?" **

"That's rather insensitive," Lily huffed. "He just wrote him a rejection letter about it."

**He gave a hearty guffaw and clapped Nearly Headless Nick on the shoulder.**

"**Welcome, Patrick," said Nick stiffly.**

"**Live 'uns!" said Sir Patrick, spotting Harry, Ron, and Hermione and giving a huge, fake jump of astonishment, so that his head fell off again (the crowd howled with laughter).**

"You know, when you think about it, they're really standing alone in a freezing dungeon," Fred mused.

"**Very amusing," said Nearly Headless Nick darkly.**

"**Don't mind Nick!" shouted Sir Patrick's head from the floor. "Still upset we won't let him join the Hunt! But I mean to say — look at the fellow —"**

"That's not a very nice thing to say," Lily said snippily, crossing her arms. She was not liking the Headless Hunt less and less with everything this Sir Patrick fellow said.

"**I think," said Harry hurriedly, at a meaningful look from Nick, "Nick's very — frightening and — er —"**

"They're just all over this lying thing tonight," Teddy chortled. "_so _convincing."

"**Ha!" yelled Sir Patrick's head. "Bet he asked you to say that!"**

"What gave it away?" Fred asked innocently.

"**If I could have everyone's attention, it's time for my speech!" said Nearly Headless Nick loudly, striding toward the podium and climbing into an icy blue spotlight.**

"**My late lamented lords, ladies, and gentlemen, it is my great sorrow . . ."**

**But nobody heard much more. Sir Patrick and the rest of the Headless Hunt had just started a game of Head Hockey and the crowd were turning to watch. Nearly Headless Nick tried vainly to recapture his audience, but gave up as Sir Patrick's head went sailing past him to loud cheers.**

"That is downright rude," Lily said crossly. "It's Nick's party!"

"It's alright, Lil," Teddy said, smiling slightly at her indignation. "I doubt Nick minded as much as he seemed to. He's got plenty of friends in the ghostly community."

**Harry was very cold by now, not to mention hungry.**

"Yeah, I'm surprised they managed to stay that long," said James, sounding mildly impressed.

"Yeah, we took off after about five minutes, didn't we?" Fred commented.

"Six minutes and thirty seven seconds," James informed him. "I kept track."

"You were only there for five minutes!" Rose exclaimed indignantly. "And you've been complaining like you stayed all night!"

"Six minutes," Fred corrected.

"And thirty seven seconds," James added.

Rose looked like she wanted to lecture some more, but Albus quickly kept reading.

"**I can't stand much more of this," Ron muttered, his teeth chattering, as the orchestra ground back into action and the ghosts swept back onto the dance floor.**

"**Let's go," Harry agreed.**

**They backed toward the door, nodding and beaming at anyone who looked at them, and a minute later were hurrying back up the passageway full of black candles.**

"**Pudding might not be finished yet," said Ron hopefully, leading the way toward the steps to the entrance hall.**

"Oh, yeah, they had to miss the Halloween feast, too," James remembered, but Albus read over him. He had caught sight of a few italicized words that sent chills up his spine.

**And then Harry heard it.**

"**. . . **_**rip **_**. . . **_**tear **_**. . . **_**kill **_**. . ."**

It was as thought the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. The group fell silent, staring hard at the book in Albus's hands and listening hard to his voice. Lily hard burrowed into Teddy's side again and Hugo inched closer to them. Even Scorpius lifted his head, suddenly intensely interested in the story at hand.

**It was the same voice, the same cold, murderous voice he had heard in Lockhart's office.**

**He stumbled to a halt, clutching at the stone wall, listening with all his might, looking around, squinting up and down the dimly lit passageway.**

"**Harry, what're you — ?"**

"**It's that voice again — shut up a minute —"**

"**. . . **_**soo hungry **_**. . . **_**for so long **_**. . ."**

Lily whimpered and buried her face in Teddy's shirt. He put his arms around her, rubbing her back soothingly, but keeping his eyes locked on the book. What _was _going on?

Scorpius scooted a little closer to Rose and Albus, shivering at the words.

"**Listen!" said Harry urgently, and Ron and Hermione froze, watching him.**

"**. . . **_**kill **_**. . . **_**time to kill **_**. . ."**

Hugo crawled over towards his big sister, not even caring very much when she put her arm around his shoulders like she did when he was little and had a nightmare.

**The voice was growing fainter. Harry was sure it was moving away — moving upward. A mixture of fear and excitement gripped him as he stared at the dark ceiling; how could it be moving upward? Was it a phantom, to whom stone ceilings didn't matter?**

"I don't like whatever it is," Fred muttered, glancing into the shadows of the trees around them and drawing his knees up to his chin.

"**This way," he shouted, and he began to run, up the stairs, into the entrance hall. It was no good hoping to hear anything here, the babble of talk from the Halloween feast was echoing out of the Great Hall. Harry sprinted up the marble staircase to the first floor, Ron and Hermione clattering behind him.**

"**Harry, what're we —"**

"**SHH!"**

"They don't hear it," James breathed, a new fear shading his voice. "What's that mean?"

Teddy only shook his head, eyes wide.

**Harry strained his ears. Distantly, from the floor above, and growing fainter still, he heard the voice: ". . . **_**I smell blood. **_**. . . **_**ISMELL BLOOD**_**!"**

**His stomach lurched —**

His wasn't the only one. Albus could feel his own stomach flipping madly, afraid of what he was going to read.

"**It's going to kill someone!" he shouted, and ignoring Ron's and Hermione's bewildered faces, he ran up the next flight of steps three at a time, **

"Yes, let's run _towards_ the murderous voice!" Rose half shrieked slightly hysterically.

"It's not really going to kill someone is it?" Hugo squeaked, feeling sick himself.

"N-no, I-I don't think so," Rose stammered, trying to calm them both down. She looked desperately at Teddy who now had Lily in his lap, her hands pressed over her ears, not wanting to hear about a murder. But Teddy didn't know anymore than she did about this.

Albus kept reading in a quaking voice.

**trying to listen over his own pounding footsteps — Harry hurtled around the whole of the second floor, Ron and Hermione panting behind him, not stopping until they turned a corner into the last, deserted passage.**

"**Harry, **_**what **_**was that all about?" said Ron, wiping sweat off his face. "I couldn't hear anything. . . ."**

"They must have thought he was insane," Fred muttered.

"But they still fallowed him," Teddy pointed out quietly. "They always would."

**But Hermione gave a sudden gasp, pointing down the corridor.**

"_**Look**_**!"**

Everyone tensed, afraid of what was coming. Lily pressed her hands harder over her ears. Rose reached out her free hand to grab Scorpius's arm around Albus, her arm resting comfortingly across his back. James was biting his lip grimly.

**Something was shining on the wall ahead. They approached slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.**

**THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN**

**OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.**

Albus paused after these words. So it all begins.

"What does that mean?" Rose whispered, but nobody answered.

"**What's that thing — hanging underneath?" said Ron, a slight quiver in his voice.**

They all tensed again, remembering the chilling words. Teddy was suddenly aware of how very real this story was. It wasn't just one of those ghost stories Harry used to tell him on Halloween. Whatever they were about to read about – whatever that murderous voice did – really happened.

**As they edged nearer, Harry almost slipped — there was a large puddle of water on the floor; Ron and Hermione grabbed him, and they inched toward the message, eyes fixed on a dark shadow beneath it. All three of them realized what it was at once, and leapt backward with a splash.**

**Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. **

Teddy felt himself relax slightly, along with the others. It was only the cat. "It's okay, Lils," he whispered, peeling back one of her hands so she would hear him. "It's nothing too gory."

Lily looked up at him with wide, dubious eyes and he offered her a thin smile. She slid off his lap, but kept her face hidden in his shirt as Albus went on reading, voice a little stronger.

**She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring. **

Teddy would always detest the cat. They had had something of a feud for the entire seven years he'd been at Hogwarts. It was like she loved nothing more than to fallow him around, making him paranoid that every corner had Filch behind it and making him sneeze nonstop. He knew the few times he'd managed to give her a swift kick from under the invisibility cloak Harry had let him borrow for his sixth and seventh years were his fondest memories. But even so, he managed to feel pity for the skeletal creature hung by her tail, stiff as a board, eyes wide and staring.

He could feel Lily shivering at the description and wondered if he should have let her cover her ears a bit longer.

**For a few seconds, they didn't move. Then Ron said, "Let's get**

**out of here."**

"Good idea," Fred mumbled. If he knew one thing, it was never get caught at the scene of a crime, even – especially – if it wasn't your crime.

"**Shouldn't we try and help —" Harry began awkwardly.**

"He's too decent for his own good," James muttered, although he felt a flicker of pride for his father's willingness to help any living thing, even a nasty old cat.

"I don't think there's anything he can do," Teddy said quietly.

"What happened to her?" Rose asked, wide-eyed.

"I don't know, but it was dark, whatever it was," Teddy said ominously.

"**Trust me," said Ron. "We don't want to be found here."**

"No, I don't think you do," Teddy breathed.

**But it was too late. **

"Of course it was," Albus muttered under his breath.

**A rumble, as though of distant thunder, told them that the feast had just ended. From either end of the corridor where they stood came the sound of hundreds of feet climbing the stairs, and the loud, happy talk of well-fed people; next moment, students were crashing into the passage from both ends.**

**The chatter, the bustle, the noise died suddenly as the people in front spotted the hanging cat. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood alone, in the middle of the corridor, as silence fell among the mass of students pressing forward to see the grisly sight.**

"Not good," Hugo muttered.

"Ya think?" James asked hollowly.

**Then someone shouted through the quiet.**

"**Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"**

They all went instantly rigid. Teddy's explanation of the word springing to their minds. Was this what he meant? This kind of persecution, where people – students – would be hunted because of their blood?

Albus looked around at his brother and sister, Teddy, his cousins and his friend and saw the same revulsion and anger in each face, but none of them spoke a word. He looked back at the book and groaned inwardly at the next few words, almost refusing to read them out loud.

**It was Draco Malfoy. **

Rose's eyes flicked quickly to Scorpius. He hadn't moved. His eyes were still fixed on the book in Al's hands, but he seemed, if possible, even whiter than before. She couldn't read the emotion in his gray eyes.

Albus didn't stop reading, trying to gloss over the name, but he knew it was useless. He might as well have shouted it from the rooftops with the most scathing voice he could muster and it would have sounded the same to Scorpius.

**He had pushed to the front of the crowd, his cold eyes alive, his usually bloodless face flushed, as he grinned at the sight of the hanging, immobile cat.**

All eyes turned to Scorpius as Albus closed the book and tossed it away from him. Scorpius was sitting bolt upright, eyes glinting with something Rose and Albus hadn't seen in them before.

"Scorp?" Rose said tentatively.

"I understand," he said in a low voice, speaking for the first time since the last chapter.

"What do you understand?" Albus asked, his voice coming out as a whisper.

"I understand why he never talked about any of this," Scorpius said, voice shaking slightly. "He didn't want me to know what a monster he was – maybe still is!" his voice was rising as color flooded back into his pale face. "Because what kind of person does that? What kind of person shouts out that- that word and says everyone with Muggle blood will be attacked? And then looks _happy _about it! It's the people who followed _him_! The people who believed in all the murder and terrible things that _he _did! That's who my dad was! And maybe that's who he still is! Who says he's changed at all? And I'm a part of that! My DNA comes from people like _that_!"

"Stop it!" Albus interrupted, hardly noticing that he had to shout to break through Scorpius's tirade. "You didn't do anything wrong! How many times am I going to have to tell you that? It doesn't matter what your dad or your grandfather or your fourth uncle twice removed did. All we care about is what _you _do! And thinking all of that blood-purity stuff is a bunch of sick crap tells us all we need to know about you!"

They stared at each other, both breathing heavily, both unwilling to break their gaze, completely unaware of six stunned pairs of eyes watching them.

"He changed," Teddy said quietly into the silence that had pooled out from Albus and Scorpius.

Everyone whipped around to look at Teddy instead.

"How do you know?" Scorpius demanded.

"Because _you _think the way _you _do," Teddy said simply. "The twelve-year-old kid in that book was raised by people who were convinced that blood status was all that mattered. He wasn't taught anything different. Your dad was raised to reflect his parents' beliefs. If he hadn't changed, he'd be cramming all of that down your throat, too. He'd make damn sure you thought just like he did. Maybe he still thinks like that, I don't know, but if there wasn't at least some doubt in his mind, he wouldn't have let you see things the way you do. But he does. And that means he's changed."

Teddy regarded Scorpius with a serious, earnest expression. "Don't connect yourself with the choices your family made. Good or bad, they weren't your choices."

Albus looked back to Scorpius with an expression that said 'see? What have I been trying to tell you?'. Scorpius gave a half shrug, his shoulders drooping slightly, but Albus saw the corners of his mouth twitch upward.

The eight of them sat silently for a long moment, letting the tension melt away. Finally, Rose spoke.

"Do you think we should take a break?" she whispered, but everyone heard her.

"No," Teddy said, shaking his head. "It's better to just get it over with. We're already in, we might as well keep going until we get some answers. Like ripping off a plaster."

Rose nodded. "So who wants to read?"

"I'll do it," James offered when no one else seemed to want to. Taking a breath, he leaned forward and grabbed the book.


	10. The Writing on the Wall

**Chapter 10-The Writing on the Wall**

James flipped through the pages until he found the chapter they were on.

**Chapter Nine The Writing on the Wall**

No one had to ask what this chapter might be about. They all sat quietly, listening to James read. A seriousness had settled over them after the end of the last chapter and Scorpius's outburst. They wanted to know what was going on and what that bone-chilling voice was.

Lily was still huddled next to Teddy. Hugo hadn't moved from Rose's side. She and Albus sat firmly on either side of Scorpius, who was looking, not exactly happier, but better than he had for most of the last chapter.

"**What's going on here? What's going on?"**

**Attracted no doubt by Malfoy's shout, Argus Filch came shouldering his way through the crowd. **

"Oh no," Lily whispered. She didn't like Filch one bit, but Mrs. Norris seemed like the only companion he had.

**Then he saw Mrs. Norris and fell back, clutching his face in horror.**

"**My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" he shrieked.**

Even Teddy, with his notorious feud with Mrs. Norris and by extension, Filch, managed to find a small grain of pity for the man.

**And his popping eyes fell on Harry.**

And just like that the pity evaporated.

"Dad didn't do anything," Lily said heatedly.

"I don't think that ever matters to Filch," James told her, unfortunately with personal experience to back up the statement. Although most of the time it really _was _him.

"_**You**_**!" he screeched. "**_**You**_**! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll —"**

"Whoa," Albus interrupted. "That's going a bit far. They haven't even got any proof yet!"

"That is stepping over a line," Teddy frowned. "Not that he means it literally, but still. Staff members can't go around threatening twelve-year-olds."

"_**Argus**_**!"**

**Dumbledore had arrived on the scene, followed by a number of other teachers. **

"Good," Rose sighed. "He'll make sure to get the true story before anything happens."

**In seconds, he had swept past Harry, Ron, and Hermione and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket.**

"**Come with me, Argus," he said to Filch. "You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."**

**Lockhart stepped forward eagerly.**

A note of disgust colored James's voice as he read this line. Every time Lockhart came up, it made him more eager to get to the end of the book and find out what misfortune stopped him from coming back.

"**My office is nearest, Headmaster — just upstairs — please feel free —"**

"**Thank you, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore.**

**The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore; **

"Lockhart would be looking excited and important," Fred said, looking like the words left a bad taste in his mouth. "It's probably the first real action he's ever seen."

**so did Professors McGonagall and Snape.**

**As they entered Lockhart's darkened office there was a flurry of movement across the walls; Harry saw several of the Lockharts in the pictures dodging out of sight, their hair in rollers. **

Nearly everyone snickered.

**The real Lockhart lit the candles on his desk and stood back. Dumbledore**

**laid Mrs. Norris on the polished surface and began to examine her. Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged tense looks and sank into chairs outside the pool of candlelight, watching.**

**The tip of Dumbledore's long, crooked nose was barely an inch from Mrs. Norris's fur. He was looking at her closely through his half-moon spectacles, his long fingers gently prodding and poking. Professor McGonagall was bent almost as close, her eyes narrowed. Snape loomed behind them, half in shadow, wearing a most peculiar expression: It was as though he was trying hard not to smile.**

"Creepy git," James muttered.

Albus shifted uncomfortably, once again reminded of the fact that this man was his namesake and completely at a loss as to why.

**And Lockhart was hovering around all of them, making suggestions.**

"**It was definitely a curse that killed her — probably the Transmogrifian Torture — I've seen it used many times, **

"I'm sure you have," Teddy snorted. As far as he knew – and he knew quite a bit from Auror training – there was no such thing as the 'Transmogrifian Torture'.

"She's not even dead," James pointed out, rolling his eyes at the book.

**so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her. . . ."**

James made a much exaggerated event of rolling his eyes. "God, can't he just shut up?"

**Lockhart's comments were punctuated by Filch's dry, racking sobs. He was slumped in a chair by the desk, unable to look at Mrs. Norris, his face in his hands. Much as he detested Filch, Harrycouldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him, though not nearly as sorry as he felt for himself. If Dumbledore believed Filch, he would be expelled for sure.**

"Don't worry, Dad, he won't believe Filch," Lily murmured.

"Dumbledore wouldn't expel him without absolute proof," Rose said bracingly.

"I don't know if Dumbledore would even expel Harry then," Teddy said thoughtfully.

"Why not?" Scorpius wondered. "He doesn't seem like he'd play favorites like that."

"No, but Harry's a special case," Teddy explained. "Dumbledore wants to keep an eye on him. It would be dangerous to let Harry fall off the map, not just for him, but probably for the rest of the world."

**Dumbledore was now muttering strange words under his breath and tapping Mrs. Norris with his wand but nothing happened: She continued to look as though she had been recently stuffed.**

Lily made a face at the image.

"**. . . I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogou," said Lockhart, "a series of attacks, the full story's in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once. . . ."**

**The photographs of Lockhart on the walls were all nodding in agreement as he talked. One of them had forgotten to remove his hair net.**

Fred and James exchanged smirks while the rest looked exasperated and more than a little annoyed by Lockhart's natter.

**At last Dumbledore straightened up.**

"**She's not dead, Argus," he said softly.**

"Alas…" Teddy muttered under his breath.

Lily heard him and smacked his arm.

"You'll agree with me once you get to Hogwarts and meet her yourself," Teddy told Lily darkly.

"You think she finally _will_ be dead by then?" James asked, unable to keep the hope out of his voice.

"Doubt it," Teddy sighed. "If she's made it this long, she must be immortal or something. I'll bet she's more than half Kneezle. Those things live for like half a century."

James returned disappointedly to the book.

**Lockhart stopped abruptly in the middle of counting the number of murders he had prevented.**

"**Not dead?" choked Filch, looking through his fingers at Mrs. Norris. "But why's she all — all stiff and frozen?"**

"What's the matter with her?" Scorpius asked, looking between Teddy and Rose, who seemed to have all the answers.

"I don't know," Teddy said, feeling like he was saying that a lot lately. "All it says about the Chamber of Secrets in _Hogwarts: A History _is that there's a legendary chamber supposedly hidden somewhere in the school. Obviously we know the legend's true, but I've got no idea what was supposed to be in it or what happens when it's opened."

"Guess we'll just have to wait for Dad to figure it out," James sighed pointedly.

Teddy mock-glowered at him.

"**She has been Petrified," said Dumbledore **

"What's that mean?" Hugo asked.

"It's like being frozen," Teddy explained, eyebrows furrowed. "But I don't know how it could have happened…" he trailed off, thinking whatever it was was not good news.

They all exchanged worried looks.

**("Ah! I thought so!" said Lockhart). **

No one could hide the snort this elicited.

"He is such a smarmy idiot," Fred said conversationally.

"**But how, I cannot say. . . ."**

"Not even Dumbledore knows how," Rose said faintly.

"That's not good," Hugo gulped.

They all looked apprehensively at each other again before James kept reading.

"**Ask **_**him**_**!" shrieked Filch, turning his blotched and tearstained face to Harry.**

"Dad didn't do anything!" Lily exclaimed, face reddening.

James was glowering at the book too as he kept reading.

"**No second year could have done this," said Dumbledore firmly.**

"No," Teddy agreed seriously. "This had to be some seriously dark magic."

"So why's everybody accusing Dad?" Albus piped up.

"Because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Teddy said heavily. "And it's not everybody, just Filch. People are irrational when they're upset."

"He better not do anything to Dad," Lily said, crossing her arms and biting the inside of her cheek.

"I'm sure Dumbledore will keep it all fair," Teddy reassured her.

"**It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced —"**

"**He did it, he did it!" Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. "You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found — in my office — he knows I'm a — I'm a —" Filch's face worked horribly. "He knows I'm a Squib!" he finished. **

"And what makes you think Harry even cares about that?" Rose huffed, getting angry on her uncle's behalf. "He probably doesn't even know what that is!"

"The wizarding world was not as accepting of Squibs back then," Teddy said quietly. "It wasn't anything compared to even fifty years ago, but it was enough to make them see prejudice in every eye, even if it wasn't there. Unfortunately, that's the damage bigotry wreaks on it's victims." Teddy added the last part slightly bitterly, thinking of his father. His grandmother had told him once that his father had been sure she and his grandfather had practically hated him for marrying their daughter. They hadn't.

Everyone else (besides Scorius, because he didn't know anything about Teddy's parents) guessed what lay under those last few words and glanced at each other, not quite sure what to say. James cleared his throat and continued reading.

"**I never **_**touched **_**Mrs. Norris!" Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls. "And I don't even know what a Squib **_**is**_**."**

"Exactly," Rose mumbled.

"**Rubbish!" snarled Filch. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!"**

"Doesn't mean he knows the word," Rose continued under her breath. "And even if he did, why on earth would Harry care if he could do magic or not? He was raised in the Muggle world! He wasn't taught our prejudices."

"But it's no secret he doesn't get along with his aunt and uncle," Scorpius, who was next to her and could hear every word she uttered, whispered. "People could believe pretty easily that he hates nonmagic people."

Rose glared at him and Scorpius hastily retreated."I know he doesn't, I'm just saying people could believe that!"

Rose ignored him.

"**If I might speak, Headmaster," said Snape from the shadows,**

"We'd all rather you didn't," Fred grumbled.

**and Harry's sense of foreboding increased; he was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do him any good.**

"Probably not," James agreed, glowering.

"**Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said, **

"I get the feeling he doesn't believe that," Fred said portentously.

**a slight sneer curling his mouth as though he doubted it. **

"I knew there was a reason I'm taking Divination next year," Fred said, pretending to be very pleased with himself.

"**But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?"**

**Harry, Ron and Hermione all launched into an explanation about the deathday party. ". . . there were hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there —"**

"**But why not join the feast afterward?" said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Why go up to that corridor?"**

"Okay, so it looks pretty bad," James said slowly.

"And he can either lie through his teeth to the greatest wizard of all time or admit to hearing voices no one else can hear," Fred added helpfully. "Look suspicious or insane, your choice."

**Ron and Hermione looked at Harry.**

"**Because — because —" Harry said, his heart thumping very fast; something told him it would sound very far-fetched if he told them he had been led there by a bodiless voice no one but he could hear, "because we were tired and wanted to go to bed," he said.**

"Okay, so suspicious it is," Fred said, looking disappointed. Insanity was always so much more fun.

"**Without any supper?" said Snape, a triumphant smile flickering across his gaunt face. "I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties."**

"**We weren't hungry," said Ron loudly as his stomach gave a huge rumble.**

**Snape's nasty smile widened.**

James shuddered at the image.

"**I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful," he said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest."**

"What?" James spluttered, gaping incredulously at the book.

Everyone else looked rather angry about this suggestion too.

"This has nothing to do with Quidditch!" Rose snapped. "He can't prove they're lying and Dumbledore already said Harry couldn't have done it!"

"Snape. Is Evil." Fred said simply. "No matter what he did to get Al named after him, he will always be a foul git."

"**Really, Severus," said Professor McGonagall sharply, "I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong."**

"Hear hear," half the group said forcefully.

"Have I ever mentioned how awesome McGonagall is?" Fred grinned.

"No," James told him. "You're usually too busy complaining about the number of detentions she's given you."

"Well, she's awesome."

**Dumbledore was giving Harry a searching look. His twinkling light-blue gaze made Harry feel as though he were being X-rayed.**

"**Innocent until proven guilty, Severus," he said firmly.**

"Good," Lily sighed.

**Snape looked furious. So did Filch.**

"**My cat has been Petrified!" he shrieked, his eyes popping. "I want to see some **_**punishment**_**!"**

"Punishment won't do any good if you don't have the right people," Rose said tartly.

"He's a malicious old windbag," Teddy growled, scowling as he thought of his many encounters with the man. "It would make him feel better to see anyone suffering, guilty or not."

"That's terrible," Lily said, eyes flashing.

"That's Filch," Teddy returned. "The only good thing is that he's not in any position of authority. Professors must officially sanction all detentions, even though prefects can give them out, too. And McGonagall has to approve detentions. They keep a pretty close watch on all of that now. I'm not sure exactly why, but I guess there were a few nasty cases a while back and now they want to cover all their bases."

"You seem to be well-informed on the detention process at Hogwarts," James smirked.

"Comes with the whole Head boy thing," Teddy told him, rolling his eyes.

"Come on, Ted, you're not making yourself sound any cooler," James complained.

"Just keep reading."

"**We will be able to cure her, Argus," said Dumbledore patiently. "Professer Sprout recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris."**

"**I'll make it," Lockhart butted in.**

"No! Please!" Fred begged. "That scenario would only lead to disaster and chaos." He paused, considering his words, and then said, "on second thought, let him give it a try. It would be pretty entertaining."

"**I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep —"**

"**Excuse me," said Snape icily. "But I believe I am the Potions master at this school."**

**There was a very awkward pause.**

Fred and James both snickered.

"Okay, as much as I hate the evil git, you've got to give him points for that one," Fred conceded.

"**You may go," Dumbledore said to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.**

**They went, as quickly as they could without actually running. When they were a floor up from Lockhart's office, they turned into an empty classroom and closed the door quietly behind them. Harry squinted at his friends' darkened faces.**

"**D'you think I should have told them about that voice I heard?"**

"**No," said Ron, without hesitation. "Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world."**

"It isn't?" Fred asked, chewing his lip worriedly. "Er… I suppose I ought to do something about that then."

James laughed. Rose rolled her eyes.

**Something in Ron's voice made Harry ask, "You do believe me, don't you?"**

" '**Course I do," said Ron quickly. "But — you must admit it's weird. . . ."**

"No kidding," Teddy mumbled. Why was Harry the only one who could hear that voice? _Was _he really hearing something? Teddy shook his head slightly. He had to be. It wasn't coincidence that the voice lead right to the cat and the writing. So what was it then? What could do that sort of thing?

"**I know it's weird," said Harry. "The whole thing's weird. What was that writing on the wall about? 'The Chamber Has Been Opened'. . . . What's that supposed to mean?"**

"Wouldn't we all like to know," Scorpius muttered darkly.

"**You know, it rings a sort of bell," said Ron slowly. "I think someone told me a story about a secret chamber at Hogwarts once . . . might've been Bill. . . ."**

"**And what on earth's a Squib?" said Harry.**

**To his surprise, Ron stifled a snigger.**

Rose looked disapproving. Her father shouldn't be laughing about that sort of thing.

"**Well — it's not funny really — but as it's Filch," he said. "A Squib is someone who was born into a wizarding family but hasn't got any magic powers. Kind of the opposite of Muggle-born wizards, but Squibs are quite unusual. If Filch's trying to learn magic from a Kwikspell course, I reckon he must be a Squib. It would explain a lot. Like why he hates students so much." Ron gave a satisfied smile. "He's bitter."**

A look of sudden comprehension crossed Teddy's face. "That does make a lot of sense."

"It's still no reason to take it out on students," Lily huffed. "It's not our fault he can't use magic and we can."

"No, it's not," Teddy agreed.

**A clock chimed somewhere.**

"**Midnight," said Harry. "We'd better get to bed before Snape comes along and tries to frame us for something else."**

**For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. Filch kept it fresh in everyone's minds by pacing the spot where she had been attacked, as though he thought the attacker might come back. Harry had seen him scrubbing the message on the wall with Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover, but to no effect; the words still gleamed as brightly as ever on the stone. **

"Are they still there?" Hugo asked.

"I don't know," Rose admitted. "I never noticed them, if they are, but it's been twenty-five years. And anyway, that wall might have been destroyed during the battle and re-built."

"I hope they're gone," Lily shivered.

**When Filch wasn't guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like "breathing loudly" and "looking happy."**

Rose and Lily both looked furious. Fred and James were chortling. Albus and Scorpius exchanged looks, eyebrows raised.

**Ginny Weasley seemed very disturbed by Mrs. Norris's fate. According to Ron, she was a great cat lover.**

Teddy frowned, glancing sideways at Lily and could picture all too well an eleven-year-old Ginny having to witness something like this. He wished she hadn't had to.

"**But you haven't really got to know Mrs. Norris," Ron told her bracingly. "Honestly, we're much better off without her." Ginny's lip trembled. "Stuff like this doesn't often happen at Hogwarts,"**

"Right, usually it's just a massive three-headed dog guarding an invaluable stone sought after by a power-hungry psycho killer," Fred said nonchalantly.

**Ron assured her. "They'll catch the maniac who did it and have him out of here in no time. I just hope he's got time to Petrify Filch before he's expelled. I'm only joking —" Ron added hastily as Ginny blanched.**

Teddy furrowed his eyebrows at the book while Albus exchanged a surprised look with James, Lily, and Rose. Ginny was not shaken easily. Granted this was when she was young, before the war. But every one of her brothers was always saying how much like Ginny Lily was, and while she might still get scared or cry sometimes, Lily was tougher than she seemed. It must be pretty bad if she was this upset by it.

**The attack had also had an effect on Hermione. It was quite usual for Hermione to spend a lot of time reading, but she was now doing almost nothing else. **

"The surprises just keep coming," Fred commented. "There's still new reading material available at Hogwarts for Aunt Hermione."

**Nor could Harry and Ron get much response from her when they asked what she was up to, and not until the following Wednesday did they find out.**

**Harry had been held back in Potions, where Snape had made him stay behind to scrape tubeworms off the desks. After a hurried lunch, he went upstairs to meet Ron in the library, and saw Justin Finch-Fletchley, the Hufflepuff boy from Herbology, coming toward him. Harry had just opened his mouth to say hello when Justin caught sight of him, turned abruptly, and sped off in the opposite direction.**

"Why?" Hugo asked curiously.

"He caught of sight of him, it's the natural response to speed off in the opposite direction," Fred explained, rolling his eyes.

"Prat," Rose muttered, tossing a handful of grass at Fred, who was snickering.

"But why's he avoiding Dad?" Lily persisted. "I thought they got on okay. They do now. He's that bloke from Magical Law Enforcement that comes round once in a while when he's working on a case with Dad."

"My bet's it's got something to do with Mrs. Norris," Teddy said darkly, scowling at the book.

Scorpius gave Rose a pointed look. She pursed her lips angrily.

**Harry found Ron at the back of the library, measuring his History of Magic homework. Professor Binns had asked for a threefoot-long composition on "The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards."**

"Oh!" Rose exclaimed suddenly. "I read a book about that over the Easter Holidays! It was really interesting."

"Yeah, fascinating," James drawled. "Can I keep going now?"

But Rose wasn't listening. "I'll bet I could write that essay before we get back to school! We'll be getting a sneak peak at all our lessons, this way! It'll be excellent for forming a foundation for the curriculum –"

James decided to just read over her.

"**I don't believe it, I'm still eight inches short. . . ." said Ron furiously, letting go of his parchment, which sprang back into a roll. "And Hermione's done four feet seven inches and her writing's **_**tiny.**_**"**

"Yeah, Rosie's the same way," Scorpius said. "Her compositions are regular marvels, the amount of information she spews out."

Rose elbowed him in the ribs, but, in all honesty, couldn't deny it. Must be in the genes.

"**Where is she?" asked Harry, grabbing the tape measure and unrolling his own homework.**

"**Somewhere over there," said Ron, pointing along the shelves. "Looking for another book. I think she's trying to read the whole library before Christmas."**

"Wouldn't put it past her," Teddy mumbled, smiling slightly. Nearly every gift he'd ever received from Hermione was a book. Not that Teddy minded though. He liked reading, and Hermione always picked interesting topics.

**Harry told Ron about Justin Finch-Fletchley running away from him.**

"**Dunno why you care. I thought he was a bit of an idiot," said Ron, scribbling away, making his writing as large as possible. **

"Cheater," Fred coughed.

"**All that junk about Lockhart being so great —"**

**Hermione emerged from between the bookshelves. She looked irritable and at last seemed ready to talk to them.**

"_**All **_**the copies of **_**Hogwarts, A History **_**have been taken out," she said,**

"So people can read about the Chamber of Secrets," Rose said knowledgeably.

"It won't be that informative," Teddy sighed. "Like I said, it just gives a brief bit about the legend of the Chamber."

"But _every _copy?" Fred said incredulously. "There's like a whole shelf devoted to just that book."

"Ah, but your forgetting it's like two feet thick," James reminded him. "A whole shelf is like five copies."

"You two have made it into the library?" Albus asked disbelievingly.

"Yeah, freak accident," Fred shrugged.

**sitting down next to Harry and Ron. "And there's a two-week waiting list. I **_**wish **_**I hadn't left my copy at home, but I couldn't fit it in my trunk with all the Lockhart books."**

"**Why do you want it?" said Harry.**

"**The same reason everyone else wants it," said Hermione, "to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets."**

"**What's that?" said Harry quickly.**

"**That's just it. I can't remember," said Hermione, biting her lip.**

"Hang on," Fred said, holding up his hands as if to halt time itself. "Aunt Hermione didn't remember something she's read? That's got to be a sign of the Apocalypse!"

"Ha ha," Rose said dryly.

"**And I can't find the story anywhere else —"**

"**Hermione, let me read your composition," said Ron desperately, checking his watch.**

"**No, I won't," said Hermione, suddenly severe. "You've had ten days to finish it —"**

"**I only need another two inches, come on —"**

**The bell rang. Ron and Hermione led the way to History of Magic, bickering.**

"That's a shocker," Teddy laughed.

"Who wants to make bets on how many times they'll be described that way?" James asked, looking around eagerly.

"My money's on too many to count," Rose offered. Her parents' bickering was as common as rain in London. It didn't bother her. It was hardly ever more than harmless squabbling. She'd be more worried if they didn't bicker.

**History of Magic was the dullest subject on their schedule. **

"Never a truer word," James moaned.

**Professor Binns, who taught it, was their only ghost teacher, and the most exciting thing that ever happened in his classes was his entering the room through the blackboard. Ancient and shriveled, many people said he hadn't noticed he was dead. He had simply got up to teach one day and left his body behind him in an armchair in front of the staffroom fire; his routine had not varied in the slightest since.**

"That sounds terribly boring," Lily said, making a face.

"Yeah, well, that's why you've got to make up for it by exploding caldrons in potions class and stuff like that," Fred shrugged.

**Today was as boring as ever. Professor Binns opened his notes and began to read in a flat drone like an old vacuum cleaner until nearly everyone in the class was in a deep stupor, occasionally coming to long enough to copy down a name or date, then falling asleep again. He had been speaking for half an hour when something happened that had never happened before. **

"He finally got someone's name right!" Fred exclaimed.

**Hermione put up her hand.**

James paused, slightly shocked.

"Is that… even possible?" Fred asked. "Can you physically raise your hand in that class room?"

"I've never even heard of it being attempted before," James breathed.

"I've never been awake long enough to observe such a phenomenon if one has ever occurred," Fred added.

"It's craziness I tell you," Rose said sarcastically.

"That is exactly what it is!" Fred cried emphatically.

"What do you think happened to Aunt Hermione when she tried it?" James asked in a hushed voice.

"You're the one with the book," Fred pointed out.

"Oh, right."

**Professor Binns, glancing up in the middle of a deadly dull lecture on the International Warlock Convention of 1289, looked amazed.**

"That's unheard of," Fred said, sounding impressed.

"Any kind of reaction from Binns is unheard of," James corrected.

"**Miss — er — ?"**

"**Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets," said Hermione in a clear voice.**

"He was probably around to supervise the construction," Fred whispered loudly.

**Dean Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown's head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom's elbow slipped off his desk. **

**Professor Binns blinked.**

"What?" Fred gasped. "This is just the wildest History of Magic class ever."

"**My subject is History of Magic," he said in his dry, wheezy voice. "I deal with, **_**facts, **_**Miss Granger, not myths and legends." He cleared his throat with a small noise like chalk snapping and continued, "In September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers —" **

**He stuttered to a halt. Hermione's hand was waving in the air again.**

"Again?" James asked, shocked. "If he wasn't already dead, she'd be giving Binns a heart attack."

"**Miss Grant?"**

Fred snapped his fingers. "Looks like getting names right is beyond even this jarring class of firsts."

"Will you shut up so we can hear what Binns has to say about the Chamber?" Rose snapped, annoyed.

"**Please, sir, don't legends always have a basis in fact?" **

**Professor Binns was looking at her in such amazement, Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him before, alive or dead.**

"Like I was saying, it's unheard of," Fred muttered, avoiding Rose's irritated glare.

"**Well," said Professor Binns slowly, "yes, one could argue that, I suppose." He peered at Hermione as though he had never seen a student properly before. "However, the legend of which you speak is such a very **_**sensational, **_**even **_**ludicrous **_**tale —"**

"The best ones are always true," James paused to say.

**But the whole class was now hanging on Professor Binns's every word. He looked dimly at them all, every face turned to his. Harry could tell he was completely thrown by such an unusual show of interest.**

"Poor Binns," Teddy chuckled. "She's really throwing him for a loop with this 'discussion' thing."

"**Oh, very well," he said slowly. "Let me see . . . the Chamber of Secrets . . .**

They all leaned in, eager to hear more about the Chamber.

"**You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago — the precise date is uncertain — by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."**

**He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued.**

"**For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more **_**selective **_**about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. **

"So it went all the way back to the original Slytherin," Albus muttered.

"Figures that's where all this blood-purity crap came from," James said angrily. "It's practically bread into that house. They were all prejudice, evil gits who thought they were better than everyone else because of their family. No offence Scorp," he added.

"None taken," Scorpius assured, looking almost as angry as James about the whole thing. He _hated _being a part of this.

"I don't know," Teddy said slowly. "That's what it turned into, especially with Voldemort and the old rich families, but I don't think it started out that way."

"What d'you mean?" James demanded. "We just read about how Slytherin didn't like taking Muggle-borns and wanted to keep it all magical blood! From the very beginning there was prejudice!"

"Yeah, but it also just said this was during a time when witches and wizards were feared and prosecuted by Muggles," Teddy explained in a serious voice. "Think about it. Brining in students from non-magical families exposed witches and wizards severely. All it would take is one psycho parent who was terrified of magic to convince their kid magic was evil and it wouldn't be too hard to launch massive witch hunts from within Hogwarts itself. It could have meant a lot of destruction and death for our world."

"But that's crazy," James countered. "What parent would hunt their own kid? What witch or wizard could believe magic was evil?"

"It was a different time," Teddy reminded him. "People connected magic with satanic forces. Parents would think their kid was possessed, that they were doing the right thing by – well – burning them at the stake. And witches and wizards who were brought up to believe those things too might be more than willing to hunt their own people. Slytherin thought he was protecting Hogwarts and the wizarding world by blocking out that risk."

"But wizards would die out if they didn't accept muggle-borns into their world," Rose protested. "And besides, what about the kids of muggles like that? If Hogwarts didn't take them, they'd be shunned by society, thought of as freaks, persecuted even more than witches and wizards and they wouldn't be able to defend themselves!"

"I suppose that was a sacrifice Slytherin thought was necessary," Teddy supplied. "The qualities he prized were ambition and cunning, self-preservation is an essential motivator for both of those usually."

"But that's terrible!" Rose exclaimed. "He was just going to let innocent people – kids – be hurt and killed so that he didn't have to risk being caught up in the fight!"

"It's not very magnanimous of him, and it perpetuated a lot of, shall we say inverse prejudices that caused a lot of damage, but you can see where he's coming from. He wasn't motivated by greed or superiority like most of his descendants. I don't think he was really _evil_," Teddy concluded.

Fred and James looked skeptical. Lily and Hugo were staring at him with their mouths slightly open. Rose, Albus, and Scorpius exchanged looks, rather disconcerted by this view of things, though all three of them could not deny that it made sense.

"Well, evil or not, let's wait and see exactly what this Chamber has to do with it all," James said finally, turning back to the book. Teddy's theory seemed a little too optimistic in humanity to convince James. There were just some people out there who were pure evil, down to the very bottom of the black holes that took the place of their hearts. And Slytherin was the epicenter of all of them in James's experience.

**After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school."**

"Why do you think Gryffindor was the one who argued with him so much?" Rose wondered. "Helga Hufflepuff is the one that's got the corner on fairness and humanitarianism."

"I don't know," Teddy shrugged. "I know Slytherin and Gryffindor were best friends; maybe Gryffindor was the only one comfortable enough to argue with him about or maybe it bothered him most because they were so close. But it kind of makes sense. Slytherin was willing to let other people suffer because he was too afraid of taking a risk. Gryffindors are known for their risk-taking. Self-preservation tends to be kind of low on the priority scale when you're doing brave, bold, usually life-threatening stunts. I doubt avoiding risk and danger would seem worth putting innocent people in danger to Gryffindor."

**Professor Binns paused again, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old tortoise.**

Fred and James sniggered.

"**Reliable historical sources tell us this much," he said. "But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing.**

"**Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic."**

"Unleash the horror within and purge the school of all who were _unworthy_ to study magic," James repeated, looking at Teddy. "If that doesn't sound evil and prejudice, I don't know what does."

"Okay, that does make it sound pretty bad," Teddy agreed. "But most people who weren't in Slytherin thought Slytherin was the embodiment of evil, especially during the wars. The legend was kind of skewed by _that _prejudice. It does go both ways, as I'm sure Scorpius could tell us."

Scorpius ducked his head. Yeah, he could testify to that.

"But," Teddy went on, ignoring James's exasperation. "Look at it from Slytherin's place. If anything like what he feared did happen and Muggle-borns did bring a threat into the school, Hogwarts would need some way to defend itself. Of course it turned out that Slytherin's views created the threat that nearly got Hogwarts destroyed, but back in the climate of the middle ages that didn't seem like the more likely danger."

"Justify it however you want, but it still seems pretty evil to me," James declared stubbornly.

"Maybe it wasn't grounded in the most… noble… ways, but you can't just write off Slytherin as being evil without considering his motives," Teddy countered.

"I think you've been taking Dad's tolerance speeches a little too literally," James told him.

"I think you've got too much of your Dad's stubborn righteousness in you," Teddy shot back. "When Harry thinks he's right about something – especially morality – he won't give easily. But he knows there are gray areas."

"And this one's looking pretty black," James said stubbornly.

"I'm more worried about what exactly this 'horror within' is," Albus interrupted, looking apprehensively at the book.

James looked like he wanted to argue the point further, but reluctantly returned to the book. \

**There was silence as he finished telling the story, but it wasn't the usual, sleepy silence that filled Professor Binns's classes. There was unease in the air as everyone continued to watch him, hoping for more. Professor Binns looked faintly annoyed.**

"Yeah, he really prefers no one paying attention," Fred said. "He's carefully crafted his lesson plans to attract as little interest as possible. Seriously, why can't they just leave him to natter on to no one in peace?"

"**The whole thing is arrant nonsense, of course," he said. **

"That's what you think," Hugo muttered, smirking slightly to himself. His parents and uncle would no doubt prove him wrong pretty quick.

"**Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist. A tale told to frighten the gullible."**

**Hermione's hand was back in the air.**

"Three times?" Fred said incredulously. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous."

"**Sir — what exactly do you mean by the 'horror within' the Chamber?"**

Lily's eyes widened, Albus tensed expectantly, an icy chill creeping down his back at the thought of what might be slinking around the shadows of Hogwarts with his parents and aunts and uncles.

"**That is believed to be some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control," said Professor Binns in his dry, reedy voice.**

**The class exchanged nervous looks.**

So did the group clustered in a tight circle behind the Burrow's old shed.

"**I tell you, the thing does not exist," said Professor Binns, shuffling his notes. "There is no Chamber and no monster."**

"Then what happened to Mrs. Norris?" Albus asked in a slightly shaky voice.

"**But, sir," said Seamus Finnigan, "if the Chamber can only be opened by Slytherin's true heir, no one else **_**would **_**be able to find it, would they?"**

"He makes a good point," Fred agreed.

"Which leaves us with another question," Rose said, looking around at them all seriously. "Who's the heir of Slytherin?"

Nobody had an answer.

"**Nonsense, O'Flaherty," said Professor Binns in an aggravated tone. "If a long succession of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses haven't found the thing —"**

"Then none of them were Slytherin's heir," Fred supplied logically.

"**But, Professor," piped up Parvati Patil, "you'd probably have to use Dark Magic to open it —"**

"**Just because a wizard **_**doesn't **_**use Dark Magic doesn't mean he **_**can't, **_**Miss Pennyfeather," snapped Professor Binns. "I repeat, if the likes of Dumbledore —"**

"**But maybe you've got to be related to Slytherin, so Dumbledore couldn't —" began Dean Thomas, but Professor Binns had had enough.**

"**That will do," he said sharply. "It is a myth! It does not exist! There is not a shred of evidence that Slytherin ever built so much as a secret broom cupboard! I regret telling you such a foolish story! We will return, if you please, to **_**history, **_**to solid, believable, verifiable **_**fact**_**!"**

"You know, history isn't really solid or verifiable, and a lot of times people don't believe it," Rose pointed out. "It's fluid and changes based on perception and new discoveries and what people _want_ to believe."

**And within five minutes, the class had sunk back into its usual torpor.**

"Finally!" Fred exclaimed. "All is right with the world once more."

"**I always knew Salazar Slytherin was a twisted old loony," Ron told Harry and Hermione as they fought their way through the teeming corridors at the end of the lesson**

"See?" James cried. "Ron thinks he's crazy evil git too!"

"Ron was a twelve-year-old boy whose opinions were colored by deep-running personal prejudices," Teddy pointed out. "A lot like you," he added.

"I'm thirteen, thank you very much," James said haughtily. "And what makes you think he changed his mind?"

"I'm just saying that you and Ron both jump to conclusions without considering other people's perspectives sometimes," Teddy said evenly. "I do that too sometimes. It's easy to do. But you can't just write someone off like that."

"Whatever," James huffed.

"James," Teddy said gently. "I'm not trying to criticize you. I'm just trying to get you to open your mind a little. If you don't look at possibilities that challenge your beliefs, you'll end up looking pretty ignorant."

"Okay," James mumbled, returning to the book.

**to drop off their bags before dinner. "But I never knew he started all this pure-blood stuff. I wouldn't be in his House if you paid me. Honestly, if the Sorting Hat had tried to put me in Slytherin, I'd've got the train straight back home. . . ."**

"I used to wish I had," Scorpius admitted. "Before we became friends," he added, smiling at Albus and Rose.

"Well, we're glad you didn't," Albus grinned, slinging an arm around his friend's shoulders.

"Most of us," Fred corrected, but he was grinning.

**Hermione nodded fervently, but Harry didn't say anything. His stomach had just dropped unpleasantly.**

**Harry had never told Ron and Hermione that the Sorting Hat had seriously considered putting **_**him **_**in Slytherin. **

"I'd almost managed to forget about that," James sighed.

'Do you think he ever told them?" Albus asked.

The only answer he got were shrugs.

**He could remember, as though it were yesterday, the small voice that had spoken in his ear when he'd placed the hat on his head a year before: **_**You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherinwould help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that. **_**. . .**

**But Harry, who had already heard of Slytherin House's reputation for turning out Dark wizards, had thought desperately, **_**NotSlytherin**_**! and the hat had said, **_**Oh, well, if you're sure **_**. . . **_**better beGryffindor. **_**. . .**

**As they were shunted along in the throng, Colin Creevey went past.**

"**Hiya, Harry!"**

"**Hullo, Colin," said Harry automatically.**

"**Harry — Harry — a boy in my class has been saying you're —" **

**But Colin was so small he couldn't fight against the tide of people bearing him toward the Great Hall; they heard him squeak, "See you, Harry!" and he was gone.**

"**What's a boy in his class saying about you?" Hermione wondered.**

"**That I'm Slytherin's heir, I expect," said Harry, his stomach dropping another inch or so as he suddenly remembered the way Justin Finch-Fletchley had run away from him at lunchtime.**

"How can they think that?" Lily half shrieked, practically vibrating with indignation.

Everyone else was looking rather upset too.

"It's like they've forgotten _who_ he is overnight," Rose said angrily. "Half of them don't even know him, but they love to think it's him just because it's juicy gossip to add to a famous name."

"I heard Dad talking about something like that once," James said suddenly. "How people think they know him just because they know his story. He hates it."

"Who wouldn't?" Albus muttered, trying to imagine what that would be like. It wasn't too difficult. There were people who thought they knew all about _him _just because they knew his parents. Usually those were the people who didn't know his parents very well.

"**People here'll believe anything," said Ron in disgust.**

"Our sentiments exactly," Fred told the book.

**The crowd thinned and they were able to climb the next staircase without difficulty.**

"**D'you **_**really **_**think there's a Chamber of Secrets?" Ron asked Hermione.**

"**I don't know," she said, frowning. "Dumbledore couldn't cure Mrs. Norris, and that makes me think that whatever attacked her might not be — well — human."**

**As she spoke, they turned a corner and found themselves at the end of the very corridor where the attack had happened. They stopped and looked. The scene was just as it had been that night, except that there was no stiff cat hanging from the torch bracket, and an empty chair stood against the wall bearing the message "The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened."**

"**That's where Filch has been keeping guard," Ron muttered.**

**They looked at each other. The corridor was deserted.**

"**Can't hurt to have a poke around," said Harry, dropping his bag and getting to his hands and knees so that he could crawl along, searching for clues.**

"And their natural response is snooping," James beamed. "I'm proud."

"Like I keep saying," Teddy smiled, "born Aurors."

"Imagine if Aunt Hermione had joined the Aurors, too," Fred said.

"The department wouldn't know what hit them," Rose grinned.

"She's practically a part of the department already," Teddy said. "As soon as she got high enough up, she started getting herself transferred to Ron and Harry's bigger cases to deal with the legal stuff. But she really does it so she has clearance to get all the details and stays in the action. I think it was just too hard to give it up completely while they were still out there solving mysteries and thwarting bad guys," he added, grinning.

"Well, they are the best trained team the Ministry could dream of hiring," Rose said thoughtfully.

"**Scorch marks!" he said. "Here — and here —"**

"What kind of animal leaves scorch marks?" Albus asked, biting his lip.

"A dragon," Hugo suggested.

"Brilliant Hue. Slytherin picked a Dragon as his monster because they're known for their stealth and ability to petrify," Fred drawled.

"For all we know, it could be a kind of dragon," Rose snapped in defense of her little brother.

"**Come and look at this!" said Hermione. "This is funny. . . ."**

**Harry got up and crossed to the window next to the message on the wall. Hermione was pointing at the topmost pane, where around twenty spiders were scuttling, apparently fighting to get through a small crack. **

Hugo couldn't help but shudder at the image.

Fred sniggered. Rose glared at him. Lily smiled at Hugo reassuringly.

**A long, silvery thread was dangling like a rope, as though they had all climbed it in their hurry to get outside.**

"**Have you ever seen spiders act like that?" said Hermione wonderingly.**

"I've tried not to see them at all," Hugo mumbled as the others exchanged curious looks.

"**No," said Harry, "have you, Ron? Ron?"**

"Oh, I'll bet Dad just loves that," Rose said with an odd mixture of amusement and sympathy.

"Why?" Scorpius asked.

"He's almost worse than Hugo about spiders," Rose smiled.

**He looked over his shoulder. Ron was standing well back and seemed to be fighting the impulse to run.**

"**What's up?" said Harry.**

"**I — don't — like — spiders," said Ron tensely.**

"That is an understatement," Rose laughed. "I caught a spider in my room once and Dad freaked out when he saw it in the jar. He made me throw it out and then he hardly came in my room for a week."

"Well, spiders are creepy little demons," Hugo told her, wishing they could just stop talking about them.

"**I never knew that," said Hermione, looking at Ron in surprise. "You've used spiders in Potions loads of times. . . ."**

"**I don't mind them dead," said Ron, who was carefully looking anywhere but at the window. "I just don't like the way they move. . . ."**

**Hermione giggled.**

"It's not funny!" Hugo said indignantly.

"On the contrary, I find it quite amusing," Fred told him, moving his hand across the grass towards Hugo like a tarantula and sniggering when Hugo flinched away from it.

"Knock it off," Rose scowled at him, smacking his hand flat.

"**It's not funny," said Ron, fiercely. "If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my — my teddy bear into a great big filthy spider because I broke his toy broomstick. . . . You wouldn't like them either if you'd been holding your bear and suddenly it had too many legs and . . ."**

Hugo shuddered hard at the description, wrapping his arms around himself.

"That would be pretty scary," Lily agreed, shivering a little herself.

"Yeah. It kind of makes me glad I don't have siblings to scare me for life," Scorpius muttered.

"Yeah, that is one upside I could see to being an only child," Albus agreed, shooting a glare at James who smirked at him. "I still can't stand rabbits."

"Rabbits?" Scorpius asked, raising his eyebrows, but Rose shook her head.

"I'll tell you about it later," she told him.

**He broke off, shuddering. Hermione was obviously still trying not to laugh. Feeling they had better get off the subject, Harry said, "Remember all that water on the floor? Where did that come from? Someone's mopped it up."**

"**It was about here," said Ron, recovering himself to walk a few paces past Filch's chair and pointing. "Level with this door."**

**He reached for the brass doorknob but suddenly withdrew his hand as though he'd been burned.**

"**What's the matter?" said Harry.**

"**Can't go in there," said Ron gruffly. "That's a girls' toilet."**

Rose and Lily stifled giggles and James and Fred sniggered.

"**Oh, Ron, there won't be anyone in there," said Hermione, standing up and coming over. "That's Moaning Myrtle's place. Come on, let's have a look."**

"She can't be serious," James said, goggling at the book.

"What?" Rose asked. "It's not like anyone's going to be in there."

"But it's a Girls' toilet," James spluttered.

Rose rolled her eyes. "I'd be more afraid to go into the boys' bathroom."

**And ignoring the large out of order sign, she opened the door.**

**It was the gloomiest, most depressing bathroom Harry had ever set foot in. **

"Yeah, it kind of is," Rose acknowledged.

"Never mind that, he set foot in a _girls' _toilet!" James exclaimed.

"Well it's not like it's the first time," Rose reminded him, rolling her eyes.

James spluttered some more. "Yeah, but it's different! There's not a troll about to smash your mum's head in! That is the only acceptable circumstances for a bloke to go into a girls' toilet."

"Honestly, they aren't that scary," Rose sighed.

**Under a large, cracked, and spotted mirror were a row of chipped sinks. The floor was damp and reflected the dull light given off by the stubs of a few candles, burning low in their holders; the wooden doors to the stalls were flaking and scratched and one of them was dangling off its hinges.**

**Hermione put her fingers to her lips and set off toward the end stall. When she reached it she said, "Hello, Myrtle, how are you?"**

**Harry and Ron went to look. Moaning Myrtle was floating above the tank of the toilet, picking a spot on her chin.**

"**This is a **_**girls' **_**bathroom," she said, eyeing Ron and Harry suspiciously. "**_**They're **_**not girls."**

"Nope," Fred agreed, still sniggering.

"**No," Hermione agreed. "I just wanted to show them how — er — nice it is in here."**

**She waved vaguely at the dirty old mirror and the damp floor.**

"Real convincing," Albus muttered.

"**Ask her if she saw anything," Harry mouthed at Hermione.**

"That was a mistake," Rose winced.

"Why?" Hugo asked.

"Because now she'll think he's talking about her," Rose explained.

"**What are you whispering?" said Myrtle, staring at him.**

"**Nothing," said Harry quickly. "We wanted to ask —"**

"**I wish people would stop talking behind my back!" said Myrtle, in a voice choked with tears. "I **_**do **_**have feelings, you know, even if I **_**am **_**dead —"**

"**Myrtle, no one wants to upset you," said Hermione. "Harry only —"**

"**No one wants to upset me! That's a good one!" howled Myrtle. "My life was nothing but misery at this place and now people come along ruining my death!"**

"Well, I personally can't see where she gets her name from," Fred said cheerfully. "She seems like a right little ray of sunshine to me."

"For Myrtle, this is actually pretty good," Rose said.

"**We wanted to ask you if you've seen anything funny lately," said Hermione quickly. "Because a cat was attacked right outside your front door on Halloween."**

"**Did you see anyone near here that night?" said Harry. **

"**I wasn't paying attention," said Myrtle dramatically. "Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to **_**kill **_**myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm — that I'm —"**

"**Already dead," said Ron helpfully.**

"Dad!" Rose groaned.

"What?" James asked. "He was only trying to be helpful."

Rose fixed him with a severe look. "You are as hopeless as he is."

"What?" James demanded, blankly.

"Best to keep reading, mate," Teddy advised, smiling slightly.

**Myrtle gave a tragic sob, rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, splashing water all over them and vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend.**

"Well, it is the best place to settle," Fred said conversationally. "The S-bend is all twisty and uncomfortable."

**Harry and Ron stood with their mouths open, but Hermione shrugged wearily and said, "Honestly, that was almost cheerful for Myrtle. . . . Come on, let's go."**

**Harry had barely closed the door on Myrtle's gurgling sobs when a loud voice made all three of them jump.**

"Busted," James laughed, along with Fred.

"Worst timing ever," Fred chortled.

"**RON!"**

**Percy Weasley had stopped dead at the head of the stairs, prefect badge agleam, an expression of complete shock on his face.**

"**That's a **_**girls' **_**bathroom!" he gasped. "What were **_**you **_**— ?"**

"**Just having a look around," Ron shrugged. **

"Great answer," Fred laughed.

"**Clues, you know —"**

**Percy swelled in a manner that reminded Harry forcefully of Mrs. Weasley.**

"**Get — away — from — there —" Percy said, striding toward them and starting to bustle them along, flapping his arms. "Don't you **_**care **_**what this looks like? Coming back here while everyone's at dinner —"**

"**Why shouldn't we be here?" said Ron hotly, stopping short and glaring at Percy. "Listen, we never laid a finger on that cat!" **

"**That's what I told Ginny," said Percy fiercely, "but she still seems to think you're going to be expelled, I've never seen her so upset, crying her eyes out, **

"Why's Mum so upset about this?" Lily asked, feeling unsettled at the idea of her mother crying her eyes out. She had only seen her mother cry a few times, and that was at the memorial services that were held on the anniversary of the battle. They didn't count; everyone cried there.

"I dunno," Teddy admitted. "It doesn't really seem like her, does it?"

"I suppose it was pretty creepy," Rose reasoned. "I mean, some monster lurking around the school, attacking cats and daubing frightening messages on walls…"

**you might think of **_**her, **_**all the first years are thoroughly overexcited by this business —"**

"_**You **_**don't care about Ginny," said Ron, whose ears were now reddening. "**_**You're **_**just worried I'm going to mess up your chances of being Head Boy —"**

They exchanged looks. It was rare that they ever saw their aunts and uncles not getting along. None of them could be sure, but it seemed like there was more heat than maybe warranted under Ron's remarks. Percy did seem different in these books. He seemed more… worried about appearances and rules than his family. Kind of like Molly was a lot of the time. They wondered what changed him, because now Percy was the last person they'd imagine putting family second in anything.

"**Five points from Gryffindor!" Percy said tersely, fingering his prefect badge. "And I hope it teaches you a lesson! No more **_**detectivework, **_**or I'll write to Mum!"**

"Good luck with that one," Teddy snorted. They'd have to tie the three of them up to stop them from doing "detective work".

**And he strode off, the back of his neck as red as Ron's ears. **

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione chose seats as far as possible from Percy in the common room that night. Ron was still in a very bad temper and kept blotting his Charms homework. When he reached absently for his wand to remove the smudges, it ignited the parchment.**

"Ooo," Fred winced. "He really needs a new wand."

"No kidding," James agreed fervently.

**Fuming almost as much as his homework, Ron slammed **_**The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 **_**shut. To Harry's surprise, Hermione followed suit.**

"Don't even say it," Rose said, seeing Fred opening his mouth.

"**Who can it be, though?" she said in a quiet voice, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. "Who'd **_**want**_** to frighten all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwarts?"**

"Yeah," Albus mumbled. "You'd have to be pretty screwed up to actually try that."

"**Let's think," said Ron in mock puzzlement. "Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum?"**

**He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced.**

"**If you're talking about Malfoy —"**

"**Of course I am!" said Ron. "You heard him — '**_**You'll be next, Mudbloods**_**!' — come on, you've only got to look at his foul rat faceto know it's him —"**

"What were you saying about needing to be pretty screwed up to try that?" Scorpius asked quietly.

"I – " Albus stammered, but he didn't know what to say.

"It's okay," Scorpius told him dully. "It does look pretty bad for him. I've said as much already."

"I don't think it was your dad," Teddy tried to reassure him. "Dumbledore was right. No second year could have done that."

"Yeah?" Scorpius asked, but he didn't sound very hopeful.

"**Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?" said Hermione skeptically.**

"**Look at his family," said Harry, closing his books, too. "The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; he's always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin's descendants. His father's definitely evil enough."**

"Well, he's got that right," Scorpius said when he caught the others' awkward looks. "Even I have to admit that it makes sense."

Teddy still looked skeptical. "Maybe, but your grandfather seems a little too concerned with appearances to let his son do something like this. And no offense, but I don't see your dad finding a hidden chamber in his second year. It's not like there are sign posts. It would be kind of hard to find it and then know how to open it."

"I guess," Scorpius shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know what to think when it comes to my father anymore."

Teddy wished he could say something to make the kid feel better, but he couldn't think of anything more that would help.

"**They could've had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!" said Ron. "Handing it down, father to son. . . ."**

"**Well," said Hermione cautiously, "I suppose it's possible. . . ."**

"Yeah, it does sound pretty possible," Scorpius muttered. He knew his family history pretty far back, and they were nearly all Slytherins, but even the Malfoys couldn't trace their bloodline to the founders' time.

"**But how do we prove it?" said Harry darkly.**

Scorpius tensed. It was one thing to speculate, but what if he found out his father really was the one opening the Chamber? Could he ever look at him the same way again? But what if he found out it wasn't his father? It would make the whole thing a lot more bearable. Either way, he supposed the trio was going to give him an answer one way or another.

"**There might be a way," said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. "Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect —"**

"What is she thinking about?" Lily asked, not able to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

"I don't know, but I like the sound of it," Fred grinned.

Teddy was frowning. What _was _she thinking about? There wasn't a whole lot you could do with second year curriculum.

"**If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won't you?" said Ron irritably.**

They all cracked up.

"She is pretty bad about that, isn't she?" Rose laughed.

"**All right," said Hermione coldly. "What we'd need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions without him realizing it's us."**

"Covert interrogation," Fred said excitedly. "I like the way her mind works when it comes to 'detective work'."

"But that's impossible," Rose objected. "Unless they use… no way. Not even they would be able to do that during second year!"

She looked over at Teddy, who was looking just as incredulous as she was.

"What are they going to do?" James asked impatiently.

"Not that plan," Rose said. "There's no way they could pull that off."

James opened his mouth in frustration, but decided it would be faster just to keep reading. Rose was as bad as her mother when it came to explaining what she was going on about.

"**But that's impossible," Harry said as Ron laughed.**

"**No, it's not," said Hermione. "All we'd need would be some Polyjuice Potion."**

"What's that?" Lily asked for the majority of the group, who was looking confused.

"It lets you turn into someone else for an hour," Rose explained. "But it's extremely advanced. You don't even attempt it until N.E.W.T. level. Not even Mum could do that second year. And besides, the books she'd need are probably in the restricted section anyway."

"You mean like what Teddy can do?" Hugo asked. "Make you look different for a while?"

"No, not quite," Teddy explained. "It turns you into the exact duplicate of whoever you put in it. I can't duplicate people exactly. There's always something of me in my face and I can't replicate scars or freckles very well. But Polyjuice gets it exactly."

"What do you mean by 'whoever you put in it'?" Lily asked, looking a little green.

"Er, you need DNA of whoever you're changing into to make the potion work," Teddy explained.

"They'd be smashing the school rules to pieces if they go through with that," Fred said in awe. "Imagine if they got away with it! That would be even better than the flying car thing!"

"They've got to make it first, though," Rose pointed out.

"**What's that?" said Ron and Harry together.**

"**Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago —"**

"**D'you think we've got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?" muttered Ron.**

There was some snickers at this.

"**It transforms you into somebody else. Think about it! We could change into three of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us. Malfoy would probably tell us anything. He's probably boasting about it in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear him."**

"It would be a pretty good plan if they could pull it off," Teddy conceded, but he looked doubtful. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were good, really good, but this sort of thing involved a lot more conscious planning and risk than anything they'd done their first year. It was like what Aurors had to do, and they didn't have to sneak around to make the potion.

"**This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me," said Ron, frowning. "What if we were stuck looking like three of the Slytherins forever?"**

"**It wears off after a while," said Hermione, waving her hand impatiently. "But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called **_**Moste Potente Potions **_**and it's bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library."**

**There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher.**

"**Hard to see why we'd want the book, really," said Ron, "if we weren't going to try and make one of the potions."**

"Just getting a hold of the recipe will require serious lying and or rule-breaking," Rose said, chewing her lip. Every word sounded more and more like they were actually going to try this.

"**I think," said Hermione, "that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance. . . ."**

"**Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that," said Ron. "They'd have to be really thick. . . ."**

"Well, you're in luck!" James said as he put the book down. "You've got at least one of those around. And he also happens to be very into signing things!"

"You think even Lockhart could be that gullible?" Albus asked doubtfully.

"I have a feeling we're going to find out," Rose muttered.

"Who's going to read next?" Teddy asked.

"Me!" Fred said, catching sight of the next chapter title and making a grab for the book.


	11. The Rogue Bludger

**Chapter 11-The Rogue Bludger**

Fred had just opened his mouth to start reading when a high-pitched whistle pierced the air.

"What _is_ that!" Hugo complained, clapping his hands over his ears.

"The charm," Teddy muttered, jumping to his feet. "Someone's coming."

Fred flung the book at Rose, who caught it and stuffed it roughly into her beaded bag as the others scrambled to look innocent and Teddy strolled as casually as he could around the corner of the shed to head off their intruder.

"I come in peace!" Roxanne, standing a few feet from the shed, exclaimed, holding up her hands in surrender. "Put down your innocent façades! I can hardly stand their forced intensity!"

"It's alright!" Fred called quickly when he heard his sister's voice. "Roxie's on our team!"

Teddy looked uncertainly over his shoulder at Fred, but shrugged and turned back to Roxanne grinning. "Are we that obvious?"

Roxanne gave them all a long-suffering look as she rounded the corner and plopped down on the grass with the rest of them. "First of all, eight normal kids don't just 'hang out' behind a shed. That draws suspicion right away. You ought to have a better story than 'we just like the view back here'," She gave her brother a disappointed sort of look like she expected better of his sneaking-around skills.

"Other things on my mind," he told her sheepishly.

"I suppose you can get away with that this time," Roxanne sighed, shaking her head. "Where is this infamous book anyway?"

"You told her!" James accused, turning on Fred.

"Yeah, so?" Fred shot back defiantly. "She's got just as much right to know as we do. Besides, are you really questioning Roxie's trust?"

Roxanne narrowed her eyes at James.

"No! 'course not!" he said hastily.

Roxanne giggled. "You're too easy, James."

"It's just, this is supposed to be secret!" James plowed on, pretending he hadn't heard his cousin. "You guys can't go around blabbing about it to every girl who's got you wrapped around her little finger."

He looked pointedly at Teddy, who was determinedly watching a bird hopping on the ground a few feet into the trees.

"I'm not wrapped around anyone's finger," Fred objected huffily.

Roxanne grinned evilly at him. "That's what you think. But you don't know about my master manipulating skills."

Fred made a face at her. She made one right back.

"So, come to read with us, have you?" Teddy asked.

"No," Roxanne said matter-of-factly, smiling slightly at the raised eyebrows she got. "But I thought you might like to know that Molly's been snooping up in Uncle Ron's old room. I saw here coming out of there when I went to look for my good chasers' gloves, so I hope you haven't got anything incriminating up there."

Everyone turned to Rose, who held up the beaded bag and shook it slightly in answer. "All in here."

"Why does she care so much anyway?" Scorpius asked.

Molly's cousins all exchanged eye-rolls.

"Who knows what goes on inside Molly's head," Roxanne drawled.

"She's Uncle Percy's daughter," James explained. "You know what he's like in the books; it can't be all that surprising Molly gets her kicks out of busting us."

"Well, unless she manages to nick this off me, she's not going to find anything," Rose declared smugly.

"Well that makes my job a lot easier," Roxanne sighed, nodding at Rose's infamous beaded bag. It had been a key vehicle in many a scheme. "But you're starting to draw attention. Louis and Dom are getting curious too."

They all exchanged uneasy looks.

"Maybe we should just read after everyone's already gone to bed," Hugo suggested.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Teddy said quickly, thinking of how much worse that murderous voice floating around Hogwarts would be in the dark. "We'll… we'll just have to hope nobody comes poking around. And if they do, well, we'll think of something then."

"I'll try to keep them all busy, but there's only so much I can do. They already suspect I'm in on it," Roxanne told them, getting to her feet. "I'd better get back before Dom and Louis come looking for me. It's tied right now and tension's getting high."

James watched her go, wishing he could be a part of the wild, adrenalin-filled rush that was a Weasley-family Quidditch match. Fred noticed his longing expression.

"I think you'll like the next chapter," he informed James as Rose pulled the book back out and handed it to him.

"Why's that?" James asked.

Fred just flipped to the right page and read:

**Chapter Ten The Rogue Bludger**

"Quidditch!" James exclaimed at once.

"What else?" Fred grinned.

"Well, it's about time! I've gone too long without one of these chapters," James grinned.

No one commented on James's Quidditch addiction. In fact, they were all looking forward to a lighter chapter.

**Since the disastrous episode of the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not brought live creatures to class. Instead, he read passages from his books to them, and sometimes reenacted some of the more dramatic bits. **

"And he calls that a lesson!" Rose burst out indignantly. "Honestly. What an utter waste of time. They might as well be spending the hour counting specs of dust!"

"Thank Merlin McGonagall checks teachers out so we don't have to worry about being stuck with someone like this," Scorpius said fervently.

**He usually picked Harry to help him with these reconstructions; **

"Yippee," James said dully.

**so far, Harry had been forced to play a simple Transylvanian villager whom Lockhart had cured of a Babbling Curse, a yeti with a head cold, **

"Alright, maybe these classes would be entertaining if you weren't Dad," James sniggered. "I'd pay a ton of galleons to see him acting that out."

**and a vampire who had been unable to eat anything except lettuce since Lockhart had dealt with him.**

**Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf.**

Teddy's jaw set, but he didn't say anything. What kind of claptrap was Lockhart going to spread about werewolves? Somehow he doubted it would be anything putting them in a good light.

**If he hadn't had a very good reason for keeping Lockhart in a good mood, he would have refused to do it.**

"**Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you'll believe it, I pounced — like this — **_**slammed **_**him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat — I then screwed up my remaining strength and performed the immensely complex Homorphus Charm — he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher**

**than that — **

James, Albus, Lily, and Hugo couldn't help but snicker as they imagined their father/uncle doing this.

**good — the fur vanished — the fangs shrank — and he turned back into a man. Simple, yet effective — and another village will remember me forever as the hero who delivered them from the monthly terror of werewolf attacks."**

"Is that… a real charm?" Rose asked Teddy tentatively.

"Yeah," Teddy said heavily. He'd spent a lot of time researching werewolves during his school days, especially after they'd learned about them in Defense Against the Dark Arts. The more he'd learned the more upset it had made him until finally Harry had confiscated his books and told him all of that was why Hermione (and he and Ron) was fighting so hard to change things. "But it kills the werewolf, it doesn't cure him," Teddy explained. "The ministry uses it in extreme cases now, but there were times when people would use that charm to hunt werewolves on the full moon. The killing curse works too, but then the werewolf would stay in wolf-form you couldn't ID them."

"Oh," Rose mumbled

**The bell rang and Lockhart got to his feet.**

"**Homework — compose a poem about my defeat of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf! Signed copies of **_**Magical Me **_**to the author of the best one!"**

Rose rolled her eyes in exasperation. How was that assignment supposed to help teach them anything?

**The class began to leave. Harry returned to the back of the room, where Ron and Hermione were waiting.**

"**Ready?" Harry muttered.**

"**Wait till everyone's gone," said Hermione nervously. "All right . . ."**

**She approached Lockhart's desk, a piece of paper clutched tightly in her hand, Harry and Ron right behind her.**

"**Er — Professor Lockhart?" Hermione stammered. "I wanted to — to get this book out of the library. Just for background reading."**

"Wow, they're really going to try," James said, sounding impressed.

"But how on earth are they going to actually make it?" Rose asked, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows. "First of all, they'll need a place to brew it and I don't think Snape is going to let them use the dungeons. Then it's extremely advanced! I don't think basic potions ingredients will be enough! I can't believe Mum even suggested it!"

"Well, they had to try something, didn't they?" Fred shot back, uncharacteristically serious. "I mean, if those legends are true, your mum's one of the targets, isn't she?"

Rose's argument died in her throat and Hugo gulped audibly. The rest exchanged nervous looks.

"Dad and Ron wouldn't let anything happen to her, right?" Lily asked worriedly.

Teddy smiled weakly, trying to reassure her. "Not if they can help it." But he didn't know how much they could help it.

**She held out the piece of paper, her hand shaking slightly. "But the thing is, it's in the Restricted Section of the library, so I need a teacher to sign for it — I'm sure it would help me understand what you say in **_**Gadding with Ghouls **_**about slow-acting venoms —"**

"She's definitely good at sweet-talking when she wants to be," James observed, a note of pride in his voice as he remembered how she'd wheedled information about the Sorcerer's stone out of Hagrid in the last book.

"It comes in handy with her work," Teddy said thoughtfully, remembering the few weeks he'd spent shadowing her for his training. If Hermione wanted something done, she got it done.

"Mum always says she'd be a bloody good journalist," Lily piped up, grinning.

"Language, Lily," James reprimanded, imitating Percy's most pompous voice.

Lily stuck her tongue out at her brother.

"**Ah, **_**Gadding with Ghouls**_**!" said Lockhart, taking the note from Hermione and smiling widely at her. "Possibly my very favorite book. You enjoyed it?"**

"**Oh, yes," said Hermione eagerly. "So clever, the way you trapped that last one with the tea-strainer —"**

"**Well, I'm sure no one will mind me giving the best student of the year a little extra help," said Lockhart warmly, and he pulled out an enormous peacock quill. "Yes, nice, isn't it?" he said, misreading the revolted look on Ron's face. "I usually save it for book signings."**

**He scrawled an enormous loopy signature on the note and handed it back to Hermione.**

"I don't believe it," Rose said, slightly stunned. She knew Lockhart was thick, but surely he would have at least _looked _at the book they wanted to check out! "I can't believe they actually got a teacher to sing for that book when they were only in second year!"

"They're good and Lockhart's an idiot," Fred shrugged.

"**So, Harry," said Lockhart, while Hermione folded the note with fumbling fingers and slipped it into her bag. "Tomorrow's the first Quidditch match of the season, I believe? Gryffindor against Slytherin, is it not? **

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" James chanted happily, bouncing a little in anticipation.

**I hear you're a useful player.**

"That's an extreme understatement," Albus said a little indignantly.

"This is the same man who called Uncle Harry a nobody," Fred pointed out.

"Right," Albus grimaced.

**I was a Seeker, too. I was asked to try for the National Squad, but preferred to dedicate my life to the eradication of the Dark Forces. **

There were several disbelieving snorts and exasperated expressions.

"It's like he's the human bloke version of a Barbie doll," Rose exclaimed. "Made to look good and be good at everything but utterly plastic through to the core."

"What's a Barbie doll?" Scorpius asked for the rather confused group.

"A kind of muggle toy," Rose explained impatiently. "My grandparents got me some when I was little. They're these perfect plastic dolls that all look alike except they come dressed up in different costumes that make them look like they can do everything perfectly. Most of them are even blond and blue-eyed like Lockhart," Rose added, snorting.

"So Lockhart thinks he's a Barbie doll," Hugo laughed.

**Still, if ever you feel the need for a little private training, don't hesitate to ask. Always happy to pass on my expertise to less able players. . . ."**

"Oh god," James groaned. "I can't believe he just said that!"

"Dad's the best seeker ever!" Lily said indignantly.

"Yeah, well, Lockhart's the best anything in his mind," Fred shrugged, brushing off the irritation because he knew Lockhart would just keep out-doing himself every time he opened his mouth.

**Harry made an indistinct noise in his throat and then hurried off after Ron and Hermione.**

"**I don't believe it," he said as the three of them examined the signature on the note. "He didn't even **_**look **_**at the book we wanted."**

"I know!" Rose exclaimed, throwing up her arms.

"**That's because he's a brainless **_**git,**_**" said Ron. "But who cares, we've got what we needed —"**

"Yeah, I suppose that's all that really matters," James agreed, still looking annoyed.

"**He is **_**not **_**a brainless git," said Hermione shrilly as they half ran toward the library.**

"Um, yeah, he really is," Fred contradicted.

"I can't believe Mum actually _fancied _him," said Hugo, making a disgusted face.

"Me either," Rose agreed fervently.

"**Just because he said you were the best student of the year —"**

**They dropped their voices as they entered the muffled stillness of the library. Madam Pince, the librarian, was a thin, irritable woman who looked like an underfed vulture.**

Most of the students laughed at this description of her. It was pretty accurate.

"_**Moste Potente Potions**_**?" she repeated suspiciously, **

"Hmm, Lockhart was easy to fool, but they might not be able to get passed madam Pince," Rose mused. She tried not to sound hopeful, but it was hard. She didn't know exactly why she didn't want her parents and Harry to try to make the Polyjuice potion. It was dangerous and could go very badly wrong, she was sure, but it was more than that. If her mother managed to pull this off as a second year, well, there was no hope for Rose living up to her name then.

She thought about Al's words about not comparing herself to her mother, but it was hard when she was reading about all these things that she doubted _she_ could ever do.

**trying to take the note from Hermione; but Hermione wouldn't let go.**

"Why not?" James asked, confused.

"**I was wondering if I could keep it," she said breathlessly.**

"**Oh, come on," said Ron, wrenching it from her grasp and thrusting it at Madam Pince. "We'll get you another autograph. Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough."**

"Come on, Mum!" Hugo complained. "I thought you were smart enough to see Lockhart's a smarmy git!"

"Yeah, she needs to get over him soon," Lily agreed, surprised her aunt could have fallen under Lockhart's spell, too.

**Madam Pince held the note up to the light, as though determined to detect a forgery, but it passed the test. She stalked away between the lofty shelves and returned several minutes later carrying a large and moldy-looking book. **

"Ew," James, Fred, and Lily all said together.

"It's moldy," Lily said, making a face.

"It's a book," Fred said, mirroring Lily's face.

Albus and Scorpius exchanged grins at Rose's offended look.

**Hermione put it carefully into her bag and they left, trying not to walk too quickly or look too guilty.**

"Well, they didn't technically do anything wrong," James said. "Yet," he added with a wicked grin.

**Five minutes later, they were barricaded in Moaning Myrtle's out-of-order bathroom once again. **

"Why?" Hugo wanted to know. "I wouldn't go in there if you paid me."

"You wouldn't?" Lily asked him, a gleam in her eye. "Not for anything?"

"Nope. Why?" Hugo asked, suddenly suspicious.

"No reason," Lily said innocently, but of course she was thinking of all the fun it might be trying to get Hugo into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom once they started school. It was definitely something she could pull out if he needed a favor that required a fee.

**Hermione had overridden Ron's objections by pointing out that it was the last place anyone in their right minds would go, so they were guaranteed some privacy.**

"That's true," James laughed. "I never thought about that."

"No," Fred said the second he saw James's eyes light up. "I don't care how abandoned it is, we are not ever using it as a hide-out."

"But it just said no one in their right minds would go in there! It sounds perfect for us!" James protested.

Fred considered the matter. "Only if we are very, very desperate. And I mean like the-forbidden-forest-has-burned-down desperate because I'd rather hide out in there than in a _girl's bathroom_."

He said the last two words like they were poisonous and then turned back to the book before James could get any more ideas.

**Moaning Myrtle was crying noisily in her stall, but they were ignoring her, and she them.**

**Hermione opened **_**Moste Potente Potions **_**carefully, and the three of them bent over the damp-spotted pages. **

Teddy smiled a little as he recalled the countless times he'd seen the three of them huddled around some important document or another, probably looking exactly like they had when they were kids, just beginning their mystery-solving careers. It was such a familiar staple of his world.

**It was clear from a glance why it belonged in the Restricted Section. Some of the potions had effects almost too gruesome to think about, and there were some very unpleasant illustrations, which included a man who seemed to have been turned inside out and a witch sprouting several extra pairs of arms out of her head.**

"Gross!" Lily said, shuddering.

"I really hope that doesn't happen," Hugo mumbled.

"**Here it is," said Hermione excitedly as she found the page headed **_**The Polyjuice Potion. **_**It was decorated with drawings of people halfway through transforming into other people. Harry sincerely hoped the artist had imagined the looks of intense pain on their faces.**

"I don't think so," Teddy said ruefully. He had never had to take Polyjuice potion before – it was one of those times when he was really, really glad he was a metamorphmagus – but all of the other trainees had had to and none of them had good things to say about the transformation.

"**This is the most complicated potion I've ever seen," said Hermione as they scanned the recipe. **

"No kidding," Rose muttered.

"**Lacewing flies, leeches, fluxweed, and knotgrass," she murmured, running her finger down the list of ingredients. "Well, they're easy enough, they're in the student store-cupboard, we can help ourselves. . . . Oooh, look, powdered horn of a bicorn — don't know where we're going to get that — shredded skin of a boomslang — that'll be tricky, too — **

"So they can't make it?" Fred asked, looking extremely disappointed. He had no idea where they were going to get any of those ingredients.

"I don't know," Teddy said slowly. "There are ways to get that stuff… which means Harry, Ron, and Hermione will find and most likely attempt them. But I don't know if they'll work."

"Knowing them, they probably will," Albus said confidently.

Rose bit the inside of her cheek.

**and of course a bit of whoever we want to change into."**

Lily made a face. "That's disgusting."

"But at least it'll be easy to get," Fred added. "'Excuse me, do you think you could give me some of your DNA so I can turn into you and infiltrate your common room to prove that one of your friends is attacking people?' Who can say no to that?"

"**Excuse me?" said Ron sharply. "What d'you mean, a bit of whoever we're changing into? I'm drinking **_**nothing **_**with Crabbe's toenails in it —"**

A frenzy of gagging erupted around the circle, and it was a full two minutes before Fred could start reading again.

**Hermione continued as though she hadn't heard him.**

"**We don't have to worry about that yet, though, because we add those bits last. . . ."**

**Ron turned, speechless, to Harry, who had another worry.**

"**D'you realize how much we're going to have to steal, Hermione? Shredded skin of a boomslang, that's definitely not in the students' cupboard. What're we going to do, break into Snape's private stores? **

"Yes!" Fred said excitedly. "That would be awesome!"

"That sounds like it would be a suicide mission," Albus frowned.

"That's exactly why it would be awesome," James explained to his brother, rolling his eyes. "Nothing's ever worth it unless there's a considerable amount of risk. Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to get into Gryffindor, Al."

"It's thanks to me we're reading this book, isn't it?" Albus pointed out.

James shrugged.

**I don't know if this is a good idea. . . ."**

"Even Dad thinks it's too risky," Albus said triumphantly, looking over at his brother.

**Hermione shut the book with a snap.**

"**Well, if you two are going to chicken out, fine," she said. There were bright pink patches on her cheeks and her eyes were brighter than usual. "**_**I **_**don't want to break rules, you know. **_**I **_**think threatening Muggle-borns is far worse than brewing up a difficult potion. But if you don't want to find out if it's Malfoy, I'll go straight to Madam Pince now and hand the book back in —"**

There was a pause in which everybody looked slightly shocked.

"Never thought I'd see the day when Hermione would be convincing Dad and Ron to break rules," James mumbled.

"But when she says it like that…" Fred trailed off, looking much more serious and worried than he usually did. The position his aunt was in had just swept over him with amazing realness. She was being _hunted _inside her own school. Of course she wanted to do anything to solve this mystery. This wasn't just breaking rules for the sake of it or even out of curiosity. This could be life or death. Or, well, life or petrification.

Fred could tell by the looks on most of the others' faces that they were having similar revelations. Albus and James exchanged very nervous looks, Scorpius was biting his lip worriedly, and Teddy was frowning. But Rose looked simply miserable.

She was suddenly feeling wretched for wishing her mother wouldn't be able to make the potion. This was so much more than just another accomplishment. This was protection, defense. Rose couldn't imagine what it would be like to walk the corridors of Hogwarts afraid of what might be lurking around the next corner, waiting to attack you because of your blood status. If it was her, she would be trying anything to figure it out, to stop it.

But it wasn't her, like Albus had told her earlier. She wouldn't have to find out if she _could _make an extremely advanced potion illegally. This was her mother's way of fighting back, not just being good at something, and she didn't even know if the potion would turn out at all. But Rose knew that she wanted it to. This wasn't something to live up to. This wasn't something Rose ever wanted to _try _to live up to. She felt awful for having hoped the plan wouldn't work.

"Well, there's no turning back now," Teddy said after a minute. "Not after a speech like that."

"They wouldn't have turned back anyway," James asserted. "They couldn't keep out of a mystery like this if they'd tried."

"And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Albus mumbled.

"**I never thought I'd see the day when you'd be persuading us to break rules," said Ron. **

"That's what I said," James said half-heartedly.

"**All right, we'll do it. But not toenails, okay?"**

"Yes, please, for the sake of our sanity and health," said Fred emphatically.

"What will they use?" Lily inquired curiously.  
"Hair, probably," Teddy answered. "It's the easiest."

"That's not much better," Fred muttered.

"**How long will it take to make, anyway?" said Harry as Hermione, looking happier, opened the book again.**

"**Well, since the fluxweed has got to be picked at the full moon and the lacewings have got to be stewed for twenty-one days . . . I'd say it'd be ready in about a month, if we can get all the ingredients."**

"A month," Fred and James echoed incredulously.

"But that's forever!" Fred said in frustration.

"Is it even worth it, if it takes that long?" James asked dully.

"Of course it is!" Rose snapped, bristling. "It's better to do something than nothing!"

"Okay, okay!" James agreed quickly, holding up his hands in surrender.

"**A month?" said Ron. "Malfoy could have attacked half the Muggle-borns in the school by then!" But Hermione's eyes narrowed dangerously again, and he added swiftly, "But it's the best plan we've got, so full steam ahead, I say."**

"Well, he's got more sense than you," Fred sniggered to his cousin.

**However, while Hermione was checking that the coast was clear for them to leave the bathroom, Ron muttered to Harry, "It'll be a lot less hassle if you can just knock Malfoy off his broom tomorrow."**

Fred and James sniggered.

**Harry woke early on Saturday morning and lay for a while thinking about the coming Quidditch match. He was nervous, mainly at the thought of what Wood would say if Gryffindor lost, but also at the idea of facing a team mounted on the fastest racing brooms gold could buy. **

"But, as Hermione pointed out, you can't buy talent," James said confidently, the prospect of a good Quidditch match lifting everybody's spirits.

**He had never wanted to beat Slytherin so badly.**

"It just gets worse every year," James noted.

"You've only been on the team one year," Teddy pointed out, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, but I've been rooting for Gryffindor since forever," James explained as if using the ultimate logic. Fred nodded solemnly at his shoulder.

**After half an hour of lying there with his insides churning, he got up, dressed, and went down to breakfast early, where he found the rest of the Gryffindor team huddled at the long, empty table, all looking uptight and not speaking much.**

**As eleven o'clock approached, the whole school started to make its way down to the Quidditch stadium. It was a muggy sort of day with a hint of thunder in the air. Ron and Hermione came hurrying over to wish Harry good luck as he entered the locker rooms.**

**The team pulled on their scarlet Gryffindor robes, then sat down to listen to Wood's usual pre-match pep talk.**

The anticipation was buzzing in James's ears by this point and he could hardly sit still. He couldn't wait to get back to school (whoa, did he really just think that?) and feel the rush of playing against Slytherin in front of the whole school. It was the best feeling in the world for him; all the action and excitement. He knew it made Albus feel sick with nerves, even though Al was a brilliant seeker, and Lily was impervious to the crowd, but James thrived on it all.

"**Slytherin has better brooms than us," he began. **

"Very peppy," Fred noted.

"Give him a minute," James defended.

"**No point denying it. But we've got better **_**people **_**on our brooms. We've trained harder than they have, we've been flying in all weathers —" ("Too true," muttered George Weasley. "I haven't been properly dry since August") "— and we're going to make them rue the day they let that little bit of slime, Malfoy, buy his way onto their team."**

"Yes you are!" James couldn't help but cheer, punching the air.

"Save some of the enthusiasm for the match," Teddy laughed.

"Believe me, he is," Fred grinned.

**Chest heaving with emotion, Wood turned to Harry.**

"**It'll be down to you, Harry, to show them that a Seeker has to have something more than a rich father. Get to that Snitch before Malfoy or die trying, Harry, because we've got to win today, we've got to."**

"That's not melodramatic at all," Rose said, rolling her eyes, but James was looking like he wanted to cheer every word Wood said.

"**So no pressure, Harry," said Fred, winking at him.**

"None at all," Fred grinned as the others laughed.

**As they walked out onto the field, a roar of noise greeted them; mainly cheers, because Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were anxious to see Slytherin beaten, but the Slytherins in the crowd made their boos and hisses heard, too. Madam Hooch, the Quidditch teacher, asked Flint and Wood to shake hands, which they did, giving each other threatening stares and gripping rather harder than was necessary.**

"**On my whistle," said Madam Hooch. "Three . . . two . . .one . . ."**

**With a roar from the crowd to speed them upward, the fourteen players rose toward the leaden sky. Harry flew higher than any of them, squinting around for the Snitch.**

"**All right there, Scarhead?" yelled Malfoy, shooting underneath him as though to show off the speed of his broom.**

"Well that's clever," Fred drawled.

**Harry had no time to reply. At that very moment, a heavy black Bludger came pelting toward him; he avoided it so narrowly that he felt it ruffle his hair as it passed.**

"Close one," James muttered, already getting wrapped up in the game.

"**Close one, Harry!" said George, streaking past him with his club in his hand, ready to knock the Bludger back toward a Slytherin. Harry saw George give the Bludger a powerful whack in the direction of Adrian Pucey, but the Bludger changed direction in midair and shot straight for Harry again.**

"What?" Fred muttered, rereading the line to make sure it was right.

"What could make a Bludger do that?" Teddy asked, frowning.

"Nothing I know of," Fred said before he went back to reading.

**Harry dropped quickly to avoid it, and George managed to hit it hard toward Malfoy. Once again, the Bludger swerved like a boomerang and shot at Harry's head.**

**Harry put on a burst of speed and zoomed toward the other end of the field. He could hear the Bludger whistling along behind him. What was going on? Bludgers never concentrated on one player like this; it was their job to try and unseat as many people as possible. . . .**

"It's like it's gone homicidal on Harry," Teddy said indignantly.

"Foul play!" James exclaimed, looking angry. "The Slytherins must have fixed it or something!"

"But they can't have done, can they?" Fred said incredulously. "You can't just tamper with Qidditch equipment. They have all kinds of antijinx spells and charms on them."

"Maybe something went wrong with the antijinx spells and now it's gone… well, rogue," Rose suggested.

"Maybe," Fred said, looking doubtful. He'd never heard of something like that happening.

**Fred Weasley was waiting for the Bludger at the other end. Harry ducked as Fred swung at the Bludger with all his might; the Bludger was knocked off course.**

"**Gotcha!" Fred yelled happily, but he was wrong; **

"Of course he was," Lily sighed, worry mounting again. She'd seen how bad normal Bludgers could injure people. Of course that was in the much-faster-paced professional games, but still…

**as though it was magnetically attracted to Harry, the Bludger pelted after him once more and Harry was forced to fly off at full speed.**

**It had started to rain; Harry felt heavy drops fall onto his face, splattering onto his glasses. He didn't have a clue what was going on in the rest of the game until he heard Lee Jordan, who was commentating, say, "Slytherin lead, sixty points to zero —"**

"Argh!" James groaned, some of his confidence in the outcome of the match slipping.

"Slytherin's leading, their brooms are ten times faster than Gryffindor's are, and Dad's being chased by a mad Bludger," Albus counted off. "This isn't looking so good."

"Shut up, Al," James snapped.

**The Slytherins' superior brooms were clearly doing their jobs, and meanwhile the mad Bludger was doing all it could to knock Harry out of the air. Fred and George were now flying so close to him on either side that Harry could see nothing at all except their flailing arms and had no chance to look for the Snitch, let alone catch it.**

"They'd do better to just take him out of the game," Rose said, ignoring half of the others' affronted looks. "He can't even look for the Snitch! And at least that way Fred and George could go back to helping the rest of the team."

"**Someone's — tampered — with — this — Bludger —" Fred grunted, swinging his bat with all his might at it as it launched a new attack on Harry.**

"See?" James said, gesturing at the book. "It was the Slytherins!"

"I don't know about that," said Teddy skeptically. "I reckon Fred's right, it's hard to tamper with Quidditch equipment and they'd know they would never get away with it."

"Well, something's obviously gone wrong with it."

"Maybe it's like when Quirrell was cursing Dad's broom in the last book," Lily piped up, looking even more anxious. "Maybe it's the heir of Slytherin or something like that. I bet he wouldn't like Dad very much, you know defeating Voldemort and the pure-blood cause and all that."

"Harry's got rotten luck with first matches," Rose groaned as the others exchanged worried looks.

"**We need time out," said George, trying to signal to Wood and stop the Bludger breaking Harry's nose at the same time.**

**Wood had obviously got the message. Madam Hooch's whistle rang out and Harry, Fred, and George dived for the ground, still trying to avoid the mad Bludger.**

"**What's going on?" said Wood as the Gryffindor team huddled together, while Slytherins in the crowd jeered. "We're being flattened. Fred, George, where were you when that Bludger stopped Angelina scoring?"**

"**We were twenty feet above her, stopping the other Bludger from murdering Harry, Oliver," said George angrily. "Someone's fixed it — it won't leave Harry alone. It hasn't gone for anyone else all game. The Slytherins must have done something to it."**

"**But the Bludgers have been locked in Madam Hooch's office since our last practice, and there was nothing wrong with them then. . . ." said Wood, anxiously.**

Fred raised his eyebrows. "Lil might just be right about this one."

Lily did not look pleased about this. In fact, she looked even more anxious.

"I reckon Rosie's right too," Teddy said. "They ought to take Harry out of the game before that Bludger takes his head off."

**Madam Hooch was walking toward them. Over her shoulder, Harry could see the Slytherin team jeering and pointing in his direction.**

"Gits," Fred couldn't help but mutter.

"**Listen," said Harry as she came nearer and nearer, "with you two flying around me all the time the only way I'm going to catch the Snitch is if it flies up my sleeve. Go back to the rest of the team and let me deal with the rogue one."**

"Is he mad?" Fred said indignantly. "It'll kill him!"

"Dad's a good flier," James said, but even he looked apprehensive at his father's declaration. "He can dodge it… I hope."

"**Don't be thick," said Fred. "It'll take your head off."**

**Wood was looking from Harry to the Weasleys.**

"**Oliver, this is insane," said Alicia Spinnet angrily. "You can't let Harry deal with that thing on his own. Let's ask for an inquiry —"**

"Yes, listen to her," Rose encouraged. "He can't possibly let Harry try to deal with that by himself! One mistake and Harry could be very badly hurt! Winning is not worth that much. It's not," she insisted, seeing James open his mouth. "What kind of shape do you think your Dad would be in if that thing slammed into his head and he fell fifty feet?"

James closed his mouth and Lily started biting her nails nervously.

"**If we stop now, we'll have to forfeit the match!" said Harry. "And we're not losing to Slytherin just because of a crazy Bludger! Come on, Oliver, tell them to leave me alone!"**

Rose gave an exasperated sigh. "He's crazy!"

"He's self-sacrificing," Teddy muttered quietly. "Even about things like a Quidditch match."

It was something that he admired about his godfather but at the same time it also scared him a little. He wondered exactly how much of himself Harry would be willing to sacrifice if he had to.

"**This is all your fault," George said angrily to Wood. " 'Get the Snitch or die trying,' what a stupid thing to tell him —"**

"He should have known Uncle Harry _would _take that literally," said Fred heavily, sympathizing with his Dad's anger.

**Madam Hooch had joined them.**

"**Ready to resume play?" she asked Wood.**

**Wood looked at the determined look on Harry's face.**

"**All right," he said. "Fred, George, you heard Harry — leave him alone and let him deal with the Bludger on his own."**

Rose made of noise of frustration and it looked like Fred agreed with her.

James was torn. He wanted Gryffindor to win, and they couldn't if Harry didn't play. But he was afraid of how much damage that crazy Bludger might be capable of.

**The rain was falling more heavily now. On Madam Hooch's whistle, Harry kicked hard into the air and heard the telltale whoosh of the Bludger behind him. Higher and higher Harry climbed; he looped and swooped, spiraled, zigzagged, and rolled. Slightly dizzy, **

"I think we all are," Hugo mumbled.

**he nevertheless kept his eyes wide open, rain was speckling his glasses and ran up his nostrils as he hung upside down, avoiding another fierce dive from the Bludger. He could hear laughter from the crowd; he knew he must look very stupid, but the rogue Bludger was heavy and couldn't change direction as quickly as Harry could; he began a kind of roller-coaster ride around the edges of the stadium, squinting through the silver sheets of rain to the Gryffindor goal posts, where Adrian Pucey was trying to get past Wood —**

Albus tried to imagine trying to catch the Snitch like this. It made him feel a little nauseated. He was pretty good at rolls and loops to avoid Bludgers (James liked to play beater just so he could hit things at him), but he couldn't imagine doing that for a whole game.

**A whistling in Harry's ear told him the Bludger had just missed him again; he turned right over and sped in the opposite direction.**

"**Training for the ballet, Potter?" yelled Malfoy as Harry was forced to do a stupid kind of twirl in midair to dodge the Bludger, and he fled, the Bludger trailing a few feet behind him; and then, glaring back at Malfoy in hatred, he saw it — **_**the Golden Snitch. **_**It was hovering inches above Malfoy's left ear — and Malfoy, busy laughing at Harry, hadn't seen it.**

No matter his feelings towards his father at the moment, Scorpius couldn't help but burry his face in his hands in embarrassment.

"Get it, Dad!" James shouted, smirking with half of the group. "See? Dad can dodge a mad Bludger and win!"

**For an agonizing moment, Harry hung in midair, not daring to speed toward Malfoy in case he looked up and saw the Snitch.**

**WHAM.**

"I spoke too soon," said James, cringing with the others. That didn't sound good.

**He had stayed still a second too long. The Bludger had hit him at last, smashed into his elbow, and Harry felt his arm break.**

Fred winced as he read this.

"Ouch," Teddy groaned in sympathy.

"How's he gonna catch the Snitch now?" James asked in mild panic. It would be the worst thing ever if Malfoy looked up and caught the little golden ball _now _after all of that.

"Can you be more insensitive?" Rose snapped at him.

"At least it was just his arm," Albus said half-heartedly.

"For now," Teddy added darkly.

**Dimly, dazed by the searing pain in his arm, he slid sideways on his rain-drenched broom, one knee still crooked over it, his right arm dangling useless at his side —**

They all winced again at the description.

"Hang on, Dad," Albus muttered. The only time he'd ever broken a bone (actually, James had accidentally broken it for him) he had barely been able to stand up, much less keep himself on an air-born broom.

**the Bludger came pelting back for a second attack, this time aiming at his face — Harry swerved out of the way, one idea firmly lodged in his numb brain: **_**get toMalfoy.**_

A grin broke across James's face, but Rose looked utterly exasperated. Boys and winning! Albus and Scorpius exchanged half-awed, half-incredulous looks. Teddy had to laugh. His godfather was the most persevering person he had ever met.

**Through a haze of rain and pain he dived for the shimmering, sneering face below him and saw its eyes widen with fear: Malfoy thought Harry was attacking him.**

James grinned even wider. He would _love _to have seen Malfoy's face.

"**What the —" he gasped, careening out of Harry's way.**

**Harry took his remaining hand off his broom and made a wild snatch; he felt his fingers close on the cold Snitch **

"THEY WON!' James roared, leaping to his feet and doing a sort of victory dance.

"I don't believe it," Fred said slowly, shaking his head. "THEY WON!" and he leapt up and joined James in his dance.

"That's incredible," Albus said – well – incredulously.

"Well you better!" James crowed. "That was his best catch yet! And Malfoy didn't even know it was right in front of his nose!"

The others shook off their surprise and joined James and Fred in cheering Gryffindor's win and Harry's fantastic capture. But after a minute or two Fred grabbed the book again and kept reading because Harry still had a mad Bludger after his blood.

**but was now only gripping the broom with his legs, and there was a yell from the crowd below as he headed straight for the ground, trying hard not to pass out.**

"Yeah, passing out that high up would be bad," Teddy murmured.

**With a splattering thud he hit the mud and rolled off his broom. His arm was hanging at a very strange angle; **

This elicited another round of winces and sympathetic groans.

**riddled with pain, he heard, as though from a distance, a good deal of**

**whistling and shouting. He focused on the Snitch clutched in his good hand.**

"**Aha," he said vaguely. "We've won."**

**And he fainted.**

"Can't blame him," Albus mumbled, once again remembering how much it hurt to break your arm. "I've got no idea how he managed to catch the Snitch like that."

"I dunno either, but I hope someone takes care of that Bludger before it catches up with Harry again," Teddy said anxiously, imagining what kind of damage it could do now that Harry was grounded and unconscious.

Fred quickly kept reading.

**He came around, rain falling on his face, still lying on the field, with someone leaning over him. He saw a glitter of teeth.**

"Oh, Merlin!" James groaned, flopping back on the grass. "He's just got to go and ruin a good moment!"

"I have a feeling he's going to ruin more than just the moment," Teddy intoned ominously.

"**Oh, no, not you," he moaned.**

"**Doesn't know what he's saying," said Lockhart loudly to the anxious crowd of Gryffindors pressing around them. **

James snorted. "Yeah, I really think he does."

"**Not to worry, Harry. I'm about to fix your arm."**

"No!" was the general outcry from the group.

"They'd better not let him near Harry!" Rose said severely. "He'll cause even more damage. Harry needs to go straight to Madam Pomfrey."

But of course, there was nothing they could do about it.

"_**No**_**!" said Harry. "I'll keep it like this, thanks. . . ."**

"I would too," James said darkly.

**He tried to sit up, but the pain was terrible. **

Lily whimpered a little and Albus cringed.

**He heard a familiar clicking noise nearby.**

"**I don't want a photo of this, Colin," he said loudly.**

"**Lie back, Harry," said Lockhart soothingly. "It's a simple charm I've used countless times —"**

"I'm so sure," Teddy muttered, cringing in anticipation of what Lockhart was about to do.

"**Why can't I just go to the hospital wing?" said Harry through clenched teeth.**

"Why would you want to go all the way up there when you have the amazing Gilderoy Lockhart, youngest Healer ever trained by St. Mongo's until he decided to devote his life to fighting the dark arts?" Fred asked innocently.

"**He should really, Professor," said a muddy Wood, who couldn't help grinning even though his Seeker was injured. "Great capture, Harry, really spectacular, your best yet, I'd say —"**

"I do say!" James couldn't help but burst out excitedly.

**Through the thicket of legs around him, Harry spotted Fred and George Weasley, **

"Why are they suddenly Fred and George _Weasley _again?" Fred interrupted himself to ask. "Did we just go a whole scene calling them Fred and George and suddenly they need a last name again?"

The others' shrugged and Rose told him impatiently to just keep reading.

**wrestling the rogue Bludger into a box. It was still putting up a terrific fight.**

"**Stand back," said Lockhart, who was rolling up his jade-green sleeves.**

"**No — don't —" said Harry weakly, but Lockhart was twirling his wand and a second later had directed it straight at Harry's arm.**

Most people cringed in anticipation.

**A strange and unpleasant sensation started at Harry's shoulder and spread all the way down to his fingertips. It felt as though his arm was being deflated. He didn't dare look at what was happening.**

"What did he do?" Hugo asked, looking slightly green.

"I'm afraid to know," Teddy said, grimacing.

**He had shut his eyes, his face turned away from his arm, but his worst fears were realized as the people above him gasped and Colin Creevey began clicking away madly. His arm didn't hurt anymore — nor did it feel remotely like an arm.**

Albus, Rose, and Scorpius exchanged looks of trepidation, Hugo and Lily looked a mixture of grossed-out and curious, and Teddy was still grimacing.

"**Ah," said Lockhart. "Yes. Well, that can sometimes happen. But the point is, the bones are no longer broken. That's the thing to bear in mind. **

"What did he _do_?" Rose asked.

"Nothing good by the sounds of it," Albus answered.

Rose rolled her eyes at him.

**So, Harry, just toddle up to the hospital wing — ah, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, would you escort him? — and Madam Pomfrey will be able to — er — tidy you up a bit."**

"You mean clean up the extraordinary mess you've made of things," Rose corrected. "Honestly! He shouldn't be let anywhere near students."

"That might make it hard to be teacher," Fred noted.

**As Harry got to his feet, he felt strangely lopsided. Taking a deep breath he looked down at his right side. What he saw nearly made him pass out again.**

**Poking out of the end of his robes was what looked like a thick, flesh-colored rubber glove. **

"Ew!" Hugo exclaimed, scrunching up his face.

"What did he do?" Lily demanded.

**He tried to move his fingers. Nothing happened.**

**Lockhart hadn't mended Harry's bones. He had removed them.**

There was a mixture of shocked explanations and groans from those who knew what a painful process it was to re-grow any amount of bone, much less an entire arm full of them.

"How did he even do that?" Rose asked.

"He's Lockhart, I doubt even he knows," Teddy shrugged, rather wishing he could hit this idiot with a good hex for trying to heal someone with absolutely no idea what he was doing. He could have done serious, irreversible damage.

**Madam Pomfrey wasn't at all pleased.**

"I should think not," Lily said indignantly.

"**You should have come straight to me!" she raged, **

"He would have," Albus huffed. "But he wasn't allowed to."

**holding up the sad, limp remainder of what, half an hour before, had been a working arm. "I can mend bones in a second — but growing them back —"**

"**You will be able to, won't you?" said Harry desperately.**

"**I'll be able to, certainly, but it will be painful," said Madam Pomfrey grimly, throwing Harry a pair of pajamas. "You'll have to stay the night. . . ."**

**Hermione waited outside the curtain drawn around Harry's bed while Ron helped him into his pajamas. It took a while to stuff the rubbery, boneless arm into a sleeve.**

"**How can you stick up for Lockhart now, Hermione, eh?" Ron called through the curtain as he pulled Harry's limp fingers through the cuff. "If Harry had wanted deboning he would have asked."**

"**Anyone can make a mistake," said Hermione. "And it doesn't hurt anymore, does it, Harry?"**

"But it would already be healed if Lockhart hadn't touched it," James grumbled. "How _can _she still be sticking up for that git?"

"Mum doesn't like to be wrong," Hugo shrugged.

"**No," said Harry, getting into bed. "But it doesn't do anything else either."**

**As he swung himself onto the bed, his arm flapped pointlessly.**

**Hermione and Madam Pomfrey came around the curtain. Madam Pomfrey was holding a large bottle of something labeled **_**Skele**_**-**_**Gro.**_

"That stuff is so nasty," Teddy informed them, making a face.

"How do you know?" James asked.

"Training accident last year," Teddy answered, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"**You're in for a rough night," she said, pouring out a steaming beakerful and handing it to him. "Regrowing bones is a nasty business."**

"Just what every patient wants to hear," Fred said cheerfully.

**So was taking the Skele-Gro. It burned Harry's mouth and throat as it went down, making him cough and splutter. Still tut-tutting about dangerous sports and inept teachers, Madam Pomfrey retreated, leaving Ron and Hermione to help Harry gulp down some water.**

"**We won, though," said Ron, a grin breaking across his face. "That was some catch you made. Malfoy's face . . . he looked ready to kill. . . ."**

"**I want to know how he fixed that Bludger," said Hermione darkly.**

"**We can add that to the list of questions we'll ask him when we've taken the Polyjuice Potion," said Harry, sinking back onto his pillows. "I hope it tastes better than this stuff. . . ."**

"From what I've heard, it doesn't, and that's saying something," Teddy grimaced.

"**If it's got bits of Slytherins in it? You've got to be joking," said Ron.**

**The door of the hospital wing burst open at that moment. Filthy and soaking wet, the rest of the Gryffindor team had arrived to see Harry.**

"**Unbelievable flying, Harry," said George. "I've just seen Marcus Flint yelling at Malfoy. Something about having the Snitch on top of his head and not noticing. Malfoy didn't seem too happy."**

"And that makes the whole thing sweeter," James sighed happily.

**They had brought cakes, sweets, and bottles of pumpkin juice; they gathered around Harry's bed and were just getting started on what promised to be a good party when Madam Pomfrey came storming over,**

"She always breaks up the parties," Fred sighed sadly.

"Yeah, which really sucks because then there's nothing to distract you from your injury," James complained.

"I try to tell her laughter is the best medicine, but she just won't listen," Fred added, the disappointment evident in his voice.

**shouting, "This boy needs rest, he's got thirty-three bones to regrow! Out! OUT!"**

**And Harry was left alone, with nothing to distract him from the stabbing pains in his limp arm.**

"See?" James said, gesturing towards the book.

**Hours and hours later, Harry woke quite suddenly in the pitch blackness and gave a small yelp of pain: His arm now felt full of large splinters. **

Teddy winced. "That's the worst part."

**For a second, he thought that was what had woken him. Then, with a thrill of horror, he realized that someone was sponging his forehead in the dark.**

"That would be creepy," James said with a shiver. "What if it was like a crazy fan girl or something?"

"**Get off!" he said loudly, and then, "**_**Dobby**_**!"**

"Huh?" several people said in confusion.

"Well, not a girl, but definitely a fan," James said.

"What's he doing there?" Rose asked, ignoring James.

"How did he even get in?" Scorpius wondered. "Isn't Hogwarts protected by anti-apperition wards and stuff?"

"Yeah, but Elves can get around that somehow," Teddy explained.

"But what's he up to?" Rose pressed.

**The house-elf 's goggling tennis ball eyes were peering at Harry through the darkness. A single tear was running down his long, pointed nose.**

"**Harry Potter came back to school," he whispered miserably.**

"Oh, Dobby," Lily said sadly.

"**Dobby warned and warned Harry Potter. Ah sir, why didn't you heed Dobby? Why didn't Harry Potter go back home when he missed the train?"**

"It was _him_!" Rose exclaimed suddenly. "He was the one that stopped the barrier?"

"Looks like it," Teddy nodded, half-smiling as Ron's comment just before his first trip to Hogwarts about life-saving House-elves finally made complete sense.

"It was _Dobby_?" Hugo asked incredulously. "But… how?"

"He must really not want Dad at school," Albus said. "I wonder what he knows."

"Whatever it is, he almost got Dad and Ron expelled!" James said angrily. "War hero or not, what was he playing at?"

"First of all, Dad and Harry almost got themselves expelled," Rose argued. "Dobby didn't make them fly that car to school. And second, I thought you thought flying that car was the coolest thing your dad ever did. It's thanks to Dobby they did that."

James gaped at her, looking torn. Rose smirked in satisfaction.

**Harry heaved himself up on his pillows and pushed Dobby's sponge away.**

"**What're you doing here?" he said. "And how did you know I missed the train?"**

**Dobby's lip trembled and Harry was seized by a sudden suspicion.**

"**It was **_**you**_**!" he said slowly. "**_**You **_**stopped the barrier from letting us through!"**

"**Indeed yes, sir," said Dobby, nodding his head vigorously, ears flapping. "Dobby hid and watched for Harry Potter and sealed the gateway and Dobby had to iron his hands afterward" — he showed Harry ten long, bandaged fingers — **

"That really is terrible," Albus mumbled as Rose swelled with fury beside him.

"I'm glad Mum changed it," Hugo agreed, twisting his own fingers in the grass.

"**but Dobby didn't care, sir, for he thought Harry Potter was safe, and **_**never **_**did Dobby dream that Harry Potter would get to school another way!"**

"Harry's always throwing wrenches into plans like that," Teddy said, his lips twitching.

**He was rocking backward and forward, shaking his ugly head.**

"**Dobby was so shocked when he heard Harry Potter was back at Hogwarts, he let his master's dinner burn! Such a flogging Dobby never had, sir. . ."**

"That's terrible!" Lily exclaimed furiously.

"The whole practice of slavery is beyond terrible," Rose said darkly.

**Harry slumped back onto his pillows.**

"**You nearly got Ron and me expelled," he said fiercely. "You'd better get lost before my bones come back, Dobby, or I might strangle you."**

"Dad!" Lily admonished indignantly. "Rose's right, you were the one who decided to take that car."

"Only because Dobby had to go and block the barrier," James countered. "If he wasn't trying so hard to keep Dad out of school none of that would have happened."

"Either way," Teddy cut in smoothly before Lily could respond. "Dobby knew something was going to happen at Hogwarts. He must have known about he Chamber… which would mean he knows whoever's opening it."

"But he can't be our family's," Scorpius said slowly. "We never had a house-elf. At least I don't think we did…" he trailed off, a feeling of dread filling his stomach. If his father did turn out to be the heir of Slytherin that would mean Dobby's masters were his grandparents. They would be the ones treating him so badly.

"Maybe it means your dad's not the heir," Albus tried to reassure his friend, but Scorpius didn't seem to really hear him.

**Dobby smiled weakly.**

"**Dobby is used to death threats, sir. Dobby gets them five times a day at home."**

"Every time he opens his mouth he breaks my heart a little," Rose said sadly. "I just… how could people treat someone so badly?"

"They didn't see him as _someone, _that's how," Teddy said quietly.

Scorpius bowed his head. He hated finding out exactly how messed up his family was – even if that wasn't there house-elf he knew they harbored just as much cruelty towards the creatures.

**He blew his nose on a corner of the filthy pillowcase he wore, looking so pathetic that Harry felt his anger ebb away in spite of himself.**

"**Why d'you wear that thing, Dobby?" he asked curiously.**

"**This, sir?" said Dobby, plucking at the pillowcase. " 'Tis a mark of the house-elf 's enslavement, sir. Dobby can only be freed if his masters present him with clothes, sir. The family is careful not to pass Dobby even a sock, sir, for then he would be free to leave their house forever."**

"So he wouldn't be much help when it came to laundry," James said reasonably.

"James!" Rose snarled.

"I know, I know," James cut her off before she could get into full lecture mode. "I'm sorry."

"They can still do the laundry, just as long as their masters don't hand it to them," Teddy informed him heavily.

**Dobby mopped his bulging eyes and said suddenly, "Harry Potter **_**must **_**go home! Dobby thought his Bludger would be enough to make —"**

"_His _Bludger!" Lily almost screeched. "_He_ was the one trying to get Dad killed!"

"I don't think that's what he saw it as," Teddy said, trying not to be angry at the elf, but it was hard when he thought of how painful it was to regrow bones.

"He's got a funny way to go about saving people," James said heatedly. "_If _that's what he's trying to do."

"What do you mean?" Albus asked, eyes wide.

"Well, who says he's trying to help Dad, really?" James said, crossing his arms. "I mean, _he _says he is, but it doesn't seem like he's helping much."

"Harry buried him at Shell Cottage," Teddy reminded them quietly. "He's a hero."

James seemed to deflate slightly. "Yeah, well, he _ends up _being a hero, but that doesn't mean he's one now. He almost got Dad _killed_!"

Teddy shrugged. "We'll see, but I think he's trying to help. Elves have a different way of looking at things than we do."

Rose was staying quiet. Her mother's long campaign for elf rights prevented her from being able to get too mad at the creature, but all the same, that Bludger had tried to smash her uncle into pieces.

"_**Your **_**Bludger?" said Harry, anger rising once more. "What d'you mean, **_**your **_**Bludger? **_**You **_**made that Bludger try and kill me?"**

"**Not kill you, sir, never kill you!" said Dobby, shocked. "Dobby wants to save Harry Potter's life! Better sent home, grievously injured, than remain here, sir! Dobby only wanted Harry Potter hurt enough to be sent home!"**

"No, I don't think so," said Teddy, thinking about the Dursleys.

"He thinks getting Dad sent home grievously injured is helping him?" Lily asked incredulously.

"**Oh, is that all?" said Harry angrily. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me **_**why **_**you wanted me sent home in pieces?"**

"**Ah, if Harry Potter only knew!" Dobby groaned, more tears dripping onto his ragged pillowcase. "If he knew what he means to us, to the lowly, the enslaved, we dregs of the magical world! Dobby remembers how it was when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was at the height of his powers, sir! We house-elves were treated like vermin, sir! Of course, Dobby is still treated like that, sir," he admitted, drying his face on the pillowcase. "But mostly, sir, life has improved for my kind since you triumphed over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry Potter survived, and the Dark Lord's power was broken, and it was a new dawn, sir, and Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the Dark days would never end, sir. . . . And now, at Hogwarts, terrible things are to happen, are perhaps happening already, and Dobby cannot let Harry Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once**

**more —"**

"He's afraid Dad's going to get attacked?" Albus asked. "But Dad's not a Muggle-born."

"No, but it's like Lily said earlier," Rose answered. "The heir isn't going to like your dad too much, is he? I mean, defeater of Voldemort, ender of the 'dark days' and all the pure-blood mania. I'd imagine your dad's a pretty high target."

Albus looked very nervous about this view of things.

"I didn't know Dad was such a hero to house-elves," said James. "Dobby seems to think he's the embodiment of everything that's good in the world."

"To them he probably is," Teddy shrugged. "To some of them anyway. The ones who were treated like Dobby was."

His thoughts drifted back to the words carved into Dobby's gravestone at Shell cottage and he wondered how free the elf had really been and how he had died.

**Dobby froze, horrorstruck, then grabbed Harry's water jug from his bedside table and cracked it over his own head, toppling out of sight. A second later, he crawled back onto the bed, cross-eyed, muttering, "Bad Dobby, very bad Dobby . . ."**

Rose bristled, but Fred kept reading so she couldn't go into a righteous speech.

"**So there **_**is **_**a Chamber of Secrets?" Harry whispered. "And — did you say it's been opened **_**before**_**? **_**Tell **_**me, Dobby!"**

**He seized the elf 's bony wrist as Dobby's hand inched toward the water jug. "But I'm not Muggle-born — how can I be in danger from the Chamber?"**

"**Ah, sir, ask no more, ask no more of poor Dobby," stammered the elf, his eyes huge in the dark. "Dark deeds are planned in this place, but Harry Potter must not be here when they happen — go home, Harry Potter, go home. Harry Potter must not meddle in this, sir, 'tis too dangerous —"**

"That's not the way to stop Harry from meddling," Teddy smiled. "It seems like the more dangerous, the more he wants to be involved."

"He _is _a Gryffindor," James said proudly.

"**Who is it, Dobby?" Harry said, keeping a firm hold on Dobby's wrist to stop him from hitting himself with the water jug again."Who's opened it? Who opened it last time?"**

"Yeah, it would save us a lot of time if you just told us now," Fred said to the book in his hands, but it didn't change the next line.

"**Dobby can't, sir, Dobby can't, Dobby mustn't tell!" squealed the elf. "Go home, Harry Potter, go home!"**

"**I'm not going anywhere!" said Harry fiercely. "One of my best friends is Muggle-born; she'll be first in line if the Chamber really has been opened —"**

"Which means there's no way Harry's going anywhere," Rose said earnestly. "Not for anything, especially his own safety."

"**Harry Potter risks his own life for his friends!" moaned Dobby in a kind of miserable ecstasy. "So noble! So valiant! But he must save himself, he must, Harry Potter must not —"**

**Dobby suddenly froze, his bat ears quivering. Harry heard it, too. There were footsteps coming down the passageway outside.**

"**Dobby must go!" breathed the elf, terrified. There was a loud crack, and Harry's fist was suddenly clenched on thin air. He slumped back into bed, his eyes on the dark doorway to the hospital wing as the footsteps drew nearer.**

"I guess they'll just have to do it the hard way," James sighed in disappointment.

"But Dobby said the Chamber was opened before," Teddy said slowly. "I guess I knew it had been opened twice in recent history, but I never really thought about it. I wonder what that means."

The others shrugged.

**Next moment, Dumbledore was backing into the dormitory, wearing a long woolly dressing gown and a nightcap. He was carrying one end of what looked like a statue. Professor McGonagall appeared a second later, carrying its feet. Together, they heaved it onto a bed.**

"What's going on?" Hugo breathed, a shiver running up his spine.

"I'm not sure," Rose murmured back, a similar dread filling her stomach.

"**Get Madam Pomfrey," whispered Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall hurried past the end of Harry's bed out of sight. Harry lay quite still, pretending to be asleep. He heard urgent voices, and then Professor McGonagall swept back into view, closely followed by Madam Pomfrey, who was pulling a cardigan on over her nightdress. He heard a sharp intake of breath.**

"**What happened?" Madam Pomfrey whispered to Dumbledore, bending over the statue on the bed.**

"What is it?" Lily whispered, eyes huge.

Fred just kept reading.

"**Another attack," said Dumbledore. "Minerva found him on the stairs."**

There were gasps from around the group even though most of them had been expecting something like this.

"Who do you think it was?" Rose asked faintly.

The others just shook their heads at her. It could have been anyone.

"**There was a bunch of grapes next to him," said Professor McGonagall. "We think he was trying to sneak up here to visit Potter."**

**Harry's stomach gave a horrible lurch. Slowly and carefully, he raised himself a few inches so he could look at the statue on the bed. A ray of moonlight lay across its staring face.**

**It was Colin Creevey. His eyes were wide and his hands were stuck up in front of him, holding his camera.**

It was as if lead had pooled in their stomachs. They all looked at each other wide-eyed. It was one thing to hear the legends, to hear about the cat, but when it was a person… it made the whole thing seem so much more sinister.

"You don't think – he didn't die from this, did he?" Rose asked in a quavering voice. "This isn't how he –"

"No," James said, shaking his head. "No, Dumbledore said there was a way to cure Mrs. Norris, that means it'll work for Collin, too." But he sounded worried.

James had grown to quite like Collin and his camera. He knew the boy's fate was not likely to be a good one, but he just couldn't think that he would die so soon. Not like this. No one was going to die so soon. He knew there would be a lot of deaths later, during the war, his uncle being one of them, but that was a long way off.

Rose, as well as most of the others looked at Teddy.

"I don't know," he told them in frustration. "Something might have gone wrong, I really have no idea."

"I don't want him to die," Lily sniffled, burying her face in her knees.

"Lily," Teddy said, surprised by her sudden tears. He wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. But he didn't know what to say to her, because he was sure that in the end, this boy was going to die, whether it was now or later. A lot of people would.

After a moment, Fred kept reading, glad to see the end of the chapter in sight.

"**Petrified?" whispered Madam Pomfrey.**

"**Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "But I shudder to think . . . If Albus hadn't been on the way downstairs for hot chocolate — who knows what might have —"**

"What would have happened?" James asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"I don't know," Teddy said again. "But not anything good."

**The three of them stared down at Colin. Then Dumbledore leaned forward and wrenched the camera out of Colin's rigid grip.**

"**You don't think he managed to get a picture of his attacker?" said Professor McGonagall eagerly.**

**Dumbledore didn't answer. He opened the back of the camera.**

"**Good gracious!" said Madam Pomfrey.**

**A jet of steam had hissed out of the camera. Harry, three beds away, caught the acrid smell of burnt plastic.**

"**Melted," said Madam Pomfrey wonderingly. "All melted . . ."**

"Course it is," James muttered. "It would be too convenient otherwise."

"**What does this **_**mean, **_**Albus?" Professor McGonagall asked urgently.**

"**It means," said Dumbledore, "that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again."**

**Madam Pomfrey clapped a hand to her mouth. Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore.**

"**But, Albus . . . surely . . . **_**who**_**?"**

"Wouldn't we all like to know," Albus murmured.

"**The question is not **_**who**_**," said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. "The question is, **_**how. **_**. . ."**

They exchanged mystified looks, but Fred kept reading to the end of the chapter.

**And from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall's shadowy face, she didn't understand this any better than he did.**

"What's he mean 'how'?" James demanded the moment Fred had snapped the book shut.

"How could there be more than one heir?" Teddy suggested. "I'm not sure what he meant. I don't think anyone is."

"Poor Collin!" Lily said, burrowing into Teddy's side.

"It's started," Albus said quietly and they all turned to look at him. "The attacks, the _purging –_" he spoke the word like it was filthy in his mouth " – and they'll be more unless Dad and Ron and Hermione can figure it all out quick. But somehow I don't think it'll be that easy. Collin's just the first."

They all looked a little scared. Harry and Hermione were both on the top of that target list it seemed and that murderous voice didn't seem to bode well for the rest of the victims.


	12. The Pollyjuice Potion and more

**Chapter 13-The Polyjuice Potion**

After a moment or two, Rose leaned forward and took the book.

"I'll read, I suppose," she offered reluctantly. The first time she could remember being reluctant to read anything. But when she looked down at the chapter, she couldn't help but gasp softly, a thrill of excitement and anticipation, despite the serious circumstances shooting through her.

"What?" James asked, curiosity piqued.

For an answer, Rose began to read.

**Chapter twelve The Polyjuice Potion**

"Excellent!" Fred said eagerly, rubbing his hands together.

Everyone sat up a little straighter, looking at the book with the same sort of anticipation. It was all finally coming to a head.

Scorpius felt an odd nervousness flutter in his stomach. So here it was; if the potion worked – and because it was Harry, Ron, and Hermione, it probably would – then either his dad's name was going to be cleared or he would find out something that would change everything permanently.

Rose kept reading with a fervent curiosity reminiscent of her mother burning in her eyes.

**They stepped off the stone staircase at the top, and Professor McGonagall rapped on the door. It opened silently **

"That always creeps me out," Fred whispered to James, who nodded fervently.

**and they entered. Professor McGonagall told Harry to wait and left him there, alone.**

"That's just a little bit cruel," said Teddy. "He's already freaking out and thinking he's going to get blamed for attacking people, and she goes and makes him wait alone in the head's office. I'd be a pool of jelly by the time they came back if that happened to me in second year."

"No you wouldn't, Teddy," Lily said without a shadow of a doubt in her voice. "You're brave. Like Dad."

Teddy couldn't help but smile a little at her.

**Harry looked around. One thing was certain: of all the teachers' offices Harry had visited so far this year, Dumbledore's was by far the most interesting. **

"Of course it was," James said, rolling his eyes. "It's _Dumbledore_. He's probably got, like, the secrets to the universe or something hidden away in up there."

**If he hadn't been scared out of his wits that he was about to be thrown out of school, he would have been very pleased to have a chance to look around it.**

"I imagine," Teddy muttered.

**It was a large and beautiful circular room, full of funny little noises. A number of curious silver instruments stood on spindlelegged tables, whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke. **

"Secrets of the universe," James whispered loudly.

**The walls were covered with portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses, all of whom were snoozing gently in their frames. There was also an enormous, claw-footed desk, and, sitting on a shelf behind it, a shabby, tattered wizard's hat — the **_**Sorting Hat. **_

**Harry hesitated. **

"What's he gonna do?" Lily asked, confused.

"Try on the hat again would be my bet," Teddy said slowly.

"Why though?" Hugo wanted to know. "He can't be re-sorted. I don't think he'll be happy with what he hears."

"Dad doesn't _want _to be re-sorted," James told Hugo, rolling his eyes. "He's in Gryffindor after all."

"Yeah, but he almost wasn't," Teddy reminded them. "The hat told him he would have done well in Slytherin. He wants to know if it's changed its mind, if whatever made it think he would do well in Slytherin is still there."

"Is it?" Albus asked suddenly. "I mean, what did the hat see that made it think _Dad _would be good in Slytherin?"

He had wondered it a lot lately. He didn't have a strong prejudice against the Slytherins like most of the rest of his house still had, not with Scorpius as one of his best friends and after everything his father had said. But from everything the sorting hat said about Slytherin, it just didn't make sense for his dad to be sorted there. His dad wasn't exactly cunning or out for his own interests or even pure-blood. What was it that got him so close to being placed there?

The others only shrugged. As far as they knew, Albus was the expert on that subject. He was the only one who had known beforehand that Harry was nearly placed there.

Albus didn't know why, but it gave him an uneasy feeling for some reason.

**He cast a wary eye around the sleeping witches and wizards on the walls. Surely it couldn't hurt if he took the hat down and tried it on again? Just to see . . . just to make sure it **_**had**_** put him in the right House —**

"Apparently Dad thinks there is some Slytherin in him," said James, eyes going wide. It disconcerted him. Slytherin had always equaled evil in his mind and Gryffindor had always equaled good. Things were easier, more black-and-white that way… but wasn't that the stereotype his dad was always so against?

James shook his head and pushed the thought away. He went by experience and in all experience he had or had heard of, Slytherin was evil. Something else was going on here, that was the only explanation for it.

**He walked quietly around the desk, lifted the hat from its shelf, and lowered it slowly onto his head. It was much too large and slipped down over his eyes, just as it had done the last time he'd put it on. Harry stared at the black inside of the hat, waiting. Then a small voice said in his ear, "Bee in your bonnet, Harry Potter?"**

"**Er, yes," Harry muttered. "Er — sorry to bother you — I wanted to ask —"**

"**You've been wondering whether I put you in the right House," said the hat smartly. **

"Know it all," Fred muttered.

"**Yes . . . you were particularly difficult to place. But I stand by what I said before" — Harry's heart leapt — **

And so did James's. He didn't like to admit it, but he was very much in sympathy with his twelve-year-old father. He wanted to hear confirmation that, beyond a doubt, his father was Gryffindor through and through, as he had always thought.

"**you **_**would **_**have done well in Slytherin —"**

James's heart dropped right down into his stomach and Albus bit his lip. They glanced at each other almost unwillingly.

"I know it shouldn't bother me so much," Albus said quietly, "but Dad just _couldn't _have done well in Slytherin, could he have?"

Teddy shrugged. "Slytherin isn't exactly exclusive to evil, but I never really pegged Harry as a snake either."

"No, definitely not," Scorpius piped up. "Your dad would have hated it in Slytherin. Believe me."

Albus looked only slightly reassured. That only left him wondering why it had come so close.

**Harry's stomach plummeted. He grabbed the point of the hat and pulled it off. It hung limply in his hand, grubby and faded. Harry pushed it back onto its shelf, feeling sick.**

"**You're wrong," he said aloud to the still and silent hat. **

"He's starting to be afraid it really _is _him," Teddy said suddenly.

Everyone looked at him, startled.

"What d'you mean?" James asked. "Dad _knows _it's not him. I mean, don't you think he'd notice if he was opening the Chamber of Secrets."

"Maybe not," Teddy said, shaking his head. "I mean, what would you think if you were the only one hearing a murderous voice in the walls and then you find out you can speak a whole other language – a dark language – without knowing _that_. Then there's the whole Slytherin thing. You can see how it might be worrying."

"But he's not," James insisted, a little desperately.

"No, I don't think so. I doubt _he _really thinks so," Teddy said quickly. "But something like that can still nag at the back of your mind. A little scary."

James bit his lip. The others exchanged anxious looks. That would freak them out a little, they had to admit.

**It didn't move. Harry backed away, watching it. Then a strange, gagging noise behind him made him wheel around.**

"What, is a portrait dying?" Fred asked, confused.

"Secrets of the universe being revealed," James whispered.

"What if it's the voice!" Lily squealed.

Rose kept reading, smirking slightly because she'd seen what it really was.

**He wasn't alone after all. **

"Dun dun dun!" James sang dramatically.

"Shut up, James," Lily snapped biting her nails nervously.

**Standing on a golden perch behind the door was a decrepit-looking bird that resembled a half-plucked turkey. **

"Oh my god!" Fred cried, clutching his face in horror.

"Slytherin's monster is a half-plucked turkey!" James exclaimed in mock-terror.

"Jerks!" Lily huffed, flicking her cousin (who was nearest to her) in the ear.

"Ow!" Fred complained. "No need to get violent there, Lils."

"What is it?" Albus asked Rose curiously.

"Apparently Dumbledore's pet," Rose shrugged, though she couldn't imagine why Dumbledore would keep such a hideous thing around.

"Oh!" Teddy exclaimed, suddenly grinning.

"What?" Hugo asked.

"I knew he had one of those; he told me one time when I was in there," Teddy went on, annoyingly vague.

"What is it?" Rose asked again impatiently.

"You'll see," was the only answer Teddy gave, a smirk flashing across his face.

Rose huffed and kept reading.

**Harry stared at it and the bird looked balefully back, making its gagging noise again. Harry thought it looked very ill. Its eyes were dull and, even as Harry watched, a couple more feathers fell out of its tail.**

"Poor bird," Lily crooned sympathetically.

"Don't worry about it, Lily-bud," Teddy assured her. "The bird'll be fine."

"But it sounds as if it's dying," Lily said, lip beginning to tremble.

"You're such a baby, Lily," James told her, rolling his eyes. "It's just a bird."

"Don't be mean, James," Lily huffed, reaching around Fred to flick her brother in the ear.

"Look who's talking," James muttered, rubbing his ear.

**Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames.**

There were several exclamations of surprise. Realization spread across Rose's face, but James burst out laughing.

"That's just Dad's luck," he gasped. "Only a book about Dad could possibly have that sentence in it."

"You said the bird'd be alright," Lily said accusingly to Teddy, crossing her arms.

"He will be," Teddy assured her, still smiling.

"But he's on fire!" Lily exclaimed.

"Don't worry, Lils, he'll be fine," Rose told her cousin soothingly before turning to Teddy. "But how did Dumbledore get one? They're not domestic creatures! You can't tame them."

Teddy shrugged. "He's Dumbledore. He can do anything."

"Does someone want to explain to us why you seem to think a flaming bird is going to be just fine?" Albus interrupted. "Before Lily starts bawling."

"I'm not going to start _bawling,_ Al!" Lily said angrily, cheeks blazing. "_You're _the crybaby, remember Al?"

"Alright, that's enough," Teddy said swiftly as Albus glowered at his sister. "Hitting below the belt there, aren't you Lil?" he added in Lily's ear.

"He said it first," Lily muttered back petulantly.

"The bird's a phoenix," Rose explained to the rest of the group. "When they die, they rise from the ashes. So the bird'll be fine."

"Cool," Hugo breathed. "I want one."

"Sorry, Hue," Rose said, smiling slightly. "They're not exactly easy to find and impossible to tame. Dumbledore's the only one to have done it as far as I know."

"Why does all the awesome stuff have to be impossible?" Hugo complained.

"Just to aggravate you," Rose told him amusedly before she returned to the book.

**Harry yelled in shock and backed away into the desk. **

"Can't blame him there," Teddy said, imagining how much that would've freaked him out if he hadn't known the bird was a phoenix.

**He looked feverishly around in case there was a glass of water somewhere but couldn't see one; the bird, meanwhile, had become a fireball; it gave one loud shriek and next second there was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash on the floor.**

**The office door opened. Dumbledore came in, looking very somber.**

"Perfect timing," Albus muttered.

"**Professor," Harry gasped. "Your bird — I couldn't do anything — he just caught fire —"**

"I think this is the only situation where that excuse could work," Fred observed. "Mum never believes it when I try to use it."

"No one ever believes any of your excuses on principal," Rose pointed out.

Fred nodded, conceding the truth of that statement.

**To Harry's astonishment, Dumbledore smiled.**

"**About time, too," he said.**

Teddy laughed. "Yeah, that would be the last expected reaction to discovering your pet had spontaneously combusted."

"**He's been looking dreadful for days; I've been telling him to get a move on."**

**He chuckled at the stunned look on Harry's face.**

"**Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes. Watch him . . ."**

**Harry looked down in time to see a tiny, wrinkled, newborn bird poke its head out of the ashes. **

"Aww," Rose and Lily cooed together. A few of the boys exchanged eye-rolls.

**It was quite as ugly as the old one.**

Fred and James snickered, but the girls seemed unperturbed. Anything with the description 'baby' was adorable in their minds.

"**It's a shame you had to see him on a Burning Day," said Dumbledore, seating himself behind his desk. **

"Yes, it is a shame," Rose sighed. "Phoenixes are beautiful most of the time. I wish I could see one."

"**He's really very handsome most of the time, wonderful red and gold plumage. Fascinating creatures, phoenixes. They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly **_**faithful**_** pets."**

"If you can tame them," Hugo mumbled. Phoenixes sounded amazing.

**In the shock of Fawkes catching fire, Harry had forgotten what he was there for, but it all came back to him as Dumbledore settled himself in the high chair behind the desk and fixed Harry with his penetrating, light-blue stare.**

It seemed to come flooding back to those reading the book, too, because the atmosphere suddenly regained its seriousness.

**Before Dumbledore could speak another word, however, the door of the office flew open with an almighty bang and Hagrid burst in, a wild look in his eyes, his balaclava perched on top of his shaggy black head and the dead rooster still swinging from his hand.**

"**It wasn' Harry, Professor Dumbledore!" said Hagrid urgently. "I was talkin' ter him **_**seconds **_**before that kid was found, he never had time, sir —"**

"Alright Hagrid!" James and Fred cheered.

Teddy let out a silent breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. If Hagrid could vouch for Harry then there was a good chance Harry wouldn't get in trouble.

"Hagrid's the best," Albus said fervently before Rose kept reading.

**Dumbledore tried to say something, but Hagrid went ranting on, waving the rooster around in his agitation, sending feathers everywhere.**

Fred and James snickered.

"— **it can't've bin him, I'll swear it in front o' the Ministry o' Magic if I have to —"**

"**Hagrid, I —"**

"— **yeh've got the wrong boy, sir, I **_**know **_**Harry never —"**

"Good old Hagrid," Hugo said fondly.

"_**Hagrid **_**!" said Dumbledore loudly. "I do **_**not **_**think that Harry attacked those people."**

"Good," Lily mumbled. She hadn't really expected Dumbledore to be the accusing sort, but the circumstances had looked pretty bad.

Everyone else looked similarly relieved.

"**Oh," said Hagrid, the rooster falling limply at his side. "Right. I'll wait outside then, Headmaster."**

"Aawwkwaaard…" James intoned

**And he stomped out looking embarrassed.**

"**You don't think it was me, Professor?" Harry repeated hopefully as Dumbledore brushed rooster feathers off his desk.**

"**No, Harry, I don't," said Dumbledore, though his face was somber again. "But I still want to talk to you."**

"What about?" Hugo asked nervously.

"Well, he was close to the attacks," Teddy said quietly.

**Harry waited nervously while Dumbledore considered him, the tips of his long fingers together.**

"**I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you'd like to tell me," he said gently. "Anything at all."**

**Harry didn't know what to say. He thought of Malfoy shouting, "You'll be next, Mudbloods!" and of the Polyjuice Potion simmering away in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Then he thought of the disembodied voice he had heard twice and remembered what Ron had said: "**_**Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even inthe wizarding world.**_**" He thought, too, about what everyone was saying about him, and his growing dread that he was somehow connected with Salazar Slytherin. . . .**

"But nothing very important," Fred said flippantly.

"_Should _he say something?" Rose asked, lowering the book.

Teddy bit his lip. "I don't know. Probably, but he won't. I wouldn't. How do you explain any of that to the headmaster without getting in trouble or looking insane? Besides… I don't know if Dumbledore would do anything. I mean, remember the last book? He probably knew everything and didn't stop them."

"But this is serious," Rose said indignantly.

"And Voldemort attempting to rise again wasn't?" James asked incredulously.

"People are getting hurt," Rose clarified. "He wouldn't just sit back and wait for Harry and Mum and Dad to try to save the day."

"It's a fine line to walk," Teddy said thoughtfully. "I don't think Dumbledore would let people get hut if he could stop it, but I also don't think he'd stop Harry from doing this himself. He knows Harry needs all the experience he can get."

"I still think it's a dangerous game to play," Rose muttered, returning to the book.

"**No," said Harry. "There isn't anything, Professor. . . ."**

"No, nothing at all," Rose said under her breath.

**The double attack on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick turned what had hitherto been nervousness into real panic. **

"I'll bet," Albus mumbled.

**Curiously, it was Nearly Headless Nick's fate that seemed to worry people most. What could possibly do that to a ghost? people asked each other; what terrible power could harm someone who was already dead?**

"Yeah, that's pretty disturbing," Scorpius agreed uneasily.

**There was almost a stampede to book seats on the Hogwarts Express so that students could go home for Christmas.**

"**At this rate, we'll be the only ones left," Ron told Harry and Hermione. "Us, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. **

"That'd be a grand holiday," James said sarcastically.

**What a jolly holiday it's going to be."**

**Crabbe and Goyle, who always did whatever Malfoy did, had signed up to stay over the holidays, too. But Harry was glad that most people were leaving. He was tired of people skirting around him in the corridors, as though he were about to sprout fangs or spit poison; tired of all the muttering, pointing, and hissing as he passed.**

"That would be horrible," said Albus, cringing at the thought of the whole school acting like that.

"It is," Teddy said quietly, remembering how the school had acted when it got out that his dad was a werewolf. It was how they were treating Harry to a tee.

Albus and Rose looked abashed and James goggled at him.

"Do you mean – ?" James began.

"Yeah," Teddy said shortly.

"What?" Lily asked, looking confused, as did Hugo and Scorpius. Lily and Hugo had no real concept of the bigotry and prejudice most wizards still carried towards werewolves, and Scorpius didn't know anything about Teddy's dad.

"Don't worry about it, Lily," Teddy said, forcing a smile for her.

"Did people hiss at you when you were at Hogwarts?" Lily pressed on anyway.

"Something like that," Teddy mumbled, the howls of his classmates (mostly Slytherins) echoing through time. "But it was a long time ago and they got over it quick," he assured her.

"Jerks," Lily sniffed, crossing her arms and looking angry.

"Yeah, they were," Teddy agreed. "But then they heard I had you in my corner and backed off," he added, grinning slightly.

"You shouldn't make fun of me if you want to keep me in your corner," Lily told him, but she was grinning, too.

"But it's the honest truth," said Teddy, raising his hands in mock-surrender.

Lily giggled a little and Rose decided to keep reading before James could say anything that would bring back old memories for Teddy. But before she returned to the book, she caught Albus and James's eyes and she knew that it made them feel awful, too, to know that Teddy had to deal with something like this too, just because of who – what – his father had been. They hadn't known kids at Hogwarts had heckled him like that.

**Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. **

"As they should," Fred nodded approvingly.

Several people regarded him incredulously.

"What? If there isn't someone who can look at life and laugh their arse off over something, the whole world would crack up," Fred explained.

James nodded his agreement to this theory.

Rose returned to the book without comment, but a part of her rather thought her cousin was right. Her father's solution to most difficult situations was to crack a joke, and in most cases it made things better somehow. But she wasn't going to tell Fred she thought that or she would never hear the end of it.

**They went out of their way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, "Make way for the Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through. . . ."**

"Awesome!" Fred and James grinned, high-fiviing.

"At least someone can show how ridiculous everyone's being," James said emphatically.

"That'll make Dad feel better," Albus mumbled.

**Percy was deeply disapproving of this behavior.**

"Which is a sure sign it's awesome," Fred whispered to James. They snickered.

"**It is **_**not **_**a laughing matter," he said coldly.**

"And that's exactly his problem," Fred commented. "And Molly's. They don't know how to laugh it off. Well, Uncle Percy does now… sort of. But Molly sure doesn't. I thought she was going to implode the week before exams this year, she was so wound up."

"**Oh, get out of the way, Percy," said Fred. "Harry's in a hurry."**

"**Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fanged servant," said George, chortling.**

Everyone laughed.

"Dad's great," Fred said appreciatively.

**Ginny didn't find it amusing either.**

"**Oh, **_**don't,**_**" she wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of garlic when they met.**

"Mum's taking this whole thing pretty hard," James said, exchanging a look with his brother. "Usually she and Uncle George tag team stuff like this."

Teddy frowned, not liking to hear how this had affected Ginny. She didn't sound like herself at all and it disconcerted him a little.

**Harry didn't mind; it made him feel better that Fred and George, at least, thought the idea of his being Slytherin's heir was quite ludicrous. **

"Of course it is," James said forcefully. "Anyone with _half a brain_ should be able to see that."

**But their antics seemed to be aggravating Draco Malfoy, who looked increasingly sour each time he saw them at it.**

"**It's because he's **_**bursting **_**to say it's really him," said Ron knowingly. "You know how he hates anyone beating him at anything, and you're getting all the credit for his dirty work."**

Scorpius was suddenly glad that he wasn't reading this chapter. His stomach was churning more and more rapidly with anxiety with every word. He just wanted to know, good or bad, once and for all, but at the same time he wasn't sure if he ever wanted to know. Ignorance is bliss, wasn't that the saying?

"**Not for long," said Hermione in a satisfied tone. "The Polyjuice Potion's nearly ready. We'll be getting the truth out of him any day now."**

"Look, mate, don't worry yourself sick over this," Albus murmured, noticing Scorpius's increasingly miserable expression. "I mean, your dad's a real slime ball (no offense), but do you think he's really capable of _doing _this to people? Even in this book?"

"That's the problem," Scorpius whispered back. "I don't _know _anymore. We don't really know anything about them, do we? I mean, did you ever think your dad was a _parselmouth_?"

Albus grimaced. He couldn't really argue with that, but he wished Scorp wasn't taking this so hard. He almost wished they'd never told Scorpius about the books in the first place. All it seemed to be doing for him was making him miserable.

**At last the term ended, and a silence deep as the snow on the grounds descended on the castle. Harry found it peaceful, rather than gloomy, and enjoyed the fact that he, Hermione, and the Weasleys had the run of Gryffindor Tower, **

"That would be pretty awesome," James said wistfully. "Last Christmas was the first time any of us really stayed, but loads of people stay usually, anyway."

"And it was probably our last time staying," Fred added. "Uncle Charlie said Gran nearly went mad not cooking a huge meal and seeing us all. He doesn't think she'll ever spend Christmas abroad again."

"Yeah, she'll probably send us howlers if we ever skip out on Christmas," James added.

Scorpius was slightly disappointed by this news. He'd loved staying at Hogwarts and having Christmas with Al and Rose and their family. It wasn't as if he hadn't missed Christmas with his parents, but having the Slytherin dorms all to himself and endless snowball fights on the grounds and Christmas dinner in the Great Hall (at the Gryffindor table because even if they didn't have the tower all to themselves, the Weasleys and Potters did at least make up half of the Gryffindors staying). He was the only kid in his big, echoey manor and somehow the excitement of Christmas just wasn't so easy to come by there.

**which meant they could play Exploding Snap loudly without bothering anyone, and practice dueling in private. Fred, George, and Ginny had chosen to stay at school rather than visit Bill in Egypt with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Percy, who disapproved of what he termed their childish behavior, didn't spend much time in the Gryffindor common room. He had already told them pompously that **_**he **_**was only staying over Christmas because it was his duty as a prefect to support the teachers during this troubled time.**

"Sounds exactly like Molly," Fred said distastefully. "It's no wonder where she gets it from."

Teddy wondered privately if Percy's staying had anything to do with all the letters he'd been sending over the summer holidays. Was it possible that Percy had managed to get himself a girlfriend? Teddy almost hoped that was it, because that meant there was hope for Molly. He had never exactly clicked with Molly – not many people did – it had always been Vic and Dom that he'd played with when they were younger. But that didn't mean he didn't care about her. From what he'd seen, she didn't have a lot of friends. She wasn't a carbon copy of her father by any means, but if someone could stand going out with Percy when he was so poker-straight and tightly-wound, then maybe there was someone out there who would keep Molly company. He thought it would be good for her. But if he ever told her that, he was likely to get something hexed off.

**Christmas morning dawned, cold and white. Harry and Ron, the only ones left in their dormitory, were woken very early by Hermione, who burst in, fully dressed and carrying presents for them both.**

"Hang on, how'd she get into their dormitory?" James interrupted. "She's a _girl_."

"Thank you for that insightful revelation," Rose said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at James. "And you'd know if you read –"

"See, there's your problem right there. I don't read. Except for homework and that's just barely," James drawled as if he'd covered this point many times with his cousin.

"Girls can come up to the boys' dormitories but boys can't get up to the girls' dormitories," Teddy explained hastily as Rose looked irritatedly at James.

"How well I know that," James muttered under his breath and Fred sniggered.

Teddy raised an eyebrow but decided he didn't want to know.

"Anyway," he went on. "The founders thought girls were more trustworthy than boys so they can come into the boys' rooms."

"That's sexist," James huffed, crossing his arms.

"And what exactly were you planning on doing when _you_ tried to get into our dorms?" Rose asked.

"Planting a dung bomb in one of the bathrooms," James shrugged.

Teddy decided he was right in not wanting to know. Rose scoffed.

"They've got reason to be sexist then. Besides, boys live in such toxic pigsties that girls won't go up there anyway."

_Oh so naïve,_ Teddy thought with a small smile. _Give them two years…_

"**Wake up," she said loudly, pulling back the curtains at the window. **

"**Hermione — you're not supposed to be in here —" said Ron, shielding his eyes against the light.**

"**Merry Christmas to you, too," said Hermione, throwing him his present. "I've been up for nearly an hour, adding more lacewings to the potion. It's ready."**

A shiver of excitement ran around the group.

"Well, here it is," Albus murmured.

**Harry sat up, suddenly wide awake.**

"**Are you sure?"**

"Nah, she's just estimating that this dangerous potion looks about ready for ingestion," Fred said sarcastically. "It doesn't really matter if you end up stuck with an extra head or something."

"**Positive," said Hermione, shirting Scabbers the rat so that she could sit down on the end of Ron's four-poster. "If we're going to do it, I say it should be tonight."**

Most of them exchanged eager looks. They couldn't help but get wrapped up in this sneaking around and clandestine missions.

**At that moment, Hedwig swooped into the room, carrying a very small package in her beak.**

"Three guesses who _that's _from," James muttered, suddenly in a bad mood.

"The Dursleys' gift," Rose sighed.

"At least they give him something," Hugo said brightly.

"Yeah, just enough to remind Dad how much they _don't _care about him every Christmas," James snapped.

"**Hello," said Harry happily as she landed on his bed. "Are you speaking to me again?"**

"I'd be worried if she was speaking to him," Fred sniggered.

"Man, she can hold a grudge," Hugo commented. "The car thing was at the beginning of the term."

"Well, I'd be angry, too, if I got thrown out of a car," Lily defended.

**She nibbled his ear in an affectionate sort of way, which was a far better present than the one that she had brought him, which turned out to be from the Dursleys. **

"What'd I tell you?" James muttered darkly.

**They had sent Harry a toothpick and a note telling him to find out whether he'd be able to stay at Hogwarts for the summer vacation, too.**

"Well, that's nice," Lily said acidly.

Teddy clenched his fists. That was fantastic. Just fantastic. A sliver of wood and a note telling him they basically never wanted to see him again. That juwt _screamed _Merry Christmas. It was really miraculous that Harry could just brush all that crap off like he could. That kind of message could seriously mess a kid up. He remembered Vic and Dom's letters to him when their parents had told them they were going to France for Christmas and they had to stay at Hogwarts. The girls had hated being ditched for the holidays. This note was a hundred times worse than that had been.

Rose, noticing the dark looks on her cousins' faces decided it was best to hurry past this part. Even if it did make her blood boil, too.

**The rest of Harry's Christmas presents were far more satisfactory.**

"I should hope so," James said. "It would be pretty depressing if they weren't."

**Hagrid had sent him a large tin of treacle toffee, which Harry decided to soften by the fire before eating; Ron had given him a book called **_**Flying with the Cannons, **_

"An _amazing _book," Rose added, Hugo nodding enthusiastically. It had been her favorite book since she could read. Since before she could read. The Cannons were her and Hugo's favorite team, no matter what.

"You guys are so brainwashed," James laughed, looking from one to the other.

He received two fistfuls of grass in the face for the comment.

**a book of interesting facts about his favorite Quidditch team, and Hermione had bought him a luxury eagle-feather quill. Harry opened the last present to find a new, hand-knitted sweater from Mrs. Weasley and a large plum cake. He read her card with a fresh surge of guilt, thinking about Mr. Weasley's car (which hadn't been seen since its crash with the Whomping Willow), **

Fred, James, and Hugo exchanged excited looks at the mention of the car.

"So they didn't find it," Fred said eagerly. "What d'you say, Hue? You joining our expedition into the forest to retrieve it?"

"No," Rose said for her brother. "You two are not roping my brother into your insane ideas."

And then she resumed reading before the subject could be discussed further.

**and the bout of rule-breaking he and Ron were planning next.**

**No one, not even someone dreading taking Polyjuice Potion later, could fail to enjoy Christmas dinner at Hogwarts.**

"That," James said, raising a finger and pausing for emphasis. "Is incredibly true. I've never been dreading taking Polyjuice Potion, but it is impossible not to enjoy a Christmas dinner at Hogwarts under any circumstances."

**The Great Hall looked magnificent. Not only were there a dozen frost-covered Christmas trees and thick streamers of holly and mistletoe crisscrossing the ceiling, but enchanted snow was falling, warm and dry, from the ceiling. Dumbledore led them in a few of his favorite carols, Hagrid booming more and more loudly with every goblet of eggnog he consumed. Percy, who hadn't noticed that Fred had bewitched his prefect badge so that it now read "Pinhead,"**

"Fantastic," Fred chortled with the rest.

"We are _so _doing that next year!" James exclaimed.

**kept asking them all what they were sniggering at. Harry didn't even care that Draco Malfoy was making loud, snide remarks about his new sweater from the Slytherin table. **

"Git!" Fred and James shouted together.

"NO ONE disses the Weasley jumpers," James said dangerously.

**With a bit of luck, Malfoy would be getting his comeuppance in a few hours' time.**

**Harry and Ron had barely finished their third helpings of Christmas pudding when Hermione ushered them out of the hall to finalize their plans for the evening.**

"That sounds as if they're just going out to a Christmas party or something," said James.

"Some party. Illegal drinks and a few nasty Slytherins," Fred sniggered.

"**We still need a bit of the people you're changing into," said Hermione matter-of-factly, as though she were sending them to the supermarket for laundry detergent. **

"Yeah, 'cause that's definitely a normal comment to make," James said sarcastically.

"Isn't it? I find myself saying it all the time," Fred said seriously. "Does that make me weird?"

"A lot of things make you weird," Rose told him.

"Right to the heart, Rosie," said Fred, clutching his chest.

"**And obviously, it'll be best if you can get something of Crabbe's and Goyle's; they're Malfoy's best friends, he'll tell them anything. And we also need to make sure the real Crabbe and Goyle can't burst in on us while we're interrogating him.**

"**I've got it all worked out," she went on smoothly, ignoring**

**Harry's and Ron's stupefied faces. She held up two plump chocolate cakes. "I've filled these with a simple Sleeping Draught. All you have to do is make sure Crabbe and Goyle find them. You know how greedy they are, they're bound to eat them. Once they're asleep, pull out a few of their hairs and hide them in a broom closet."**

"Jeez, don't get on Hermione's bad side. Ever," James said with a mixture of awe and respect for his aunt.

"She really knows what's she's doing. Drugging and locking up a couple of classmates, making illegal potions in out-of-order toilets. It's like Aunt Hermione's gone dark-side," Fred said in the same tone.

"I don't think she can ever tell you to follow the rules after this," Scorpius said to Rose.

"Like I keep saying, if only we could harness this power for good," James said in frustration. "She could have made an untouchable prankster."

"Or a serious black market crime boss," Fred offered.

"Oh, shut up," Rose snapped at them. "Just because we intelligent people don't go around getting detentions doesn't mean we can't break the rules once in a while."

"Or once a weak," Albus muttered in her ear. Rose hid a guilty grin.

Fred and James were exchanging looks.

"You don't think this diabolical genius gene is lying dormant in our very own Rosie, do you?" Fred asked James in hushed tones.

"Do you think?" James breathed back.

"I asked you first."

"I asked you last."

"First beats last."

"New beats old."

"I hate to interrupt this deep and important debate," Rose said tartly, "but can we return to matters at hand?"

Both boys turned on their cousin.

"Are you an evil genius, Rose?" Fred asked.

Rose rolled her eyes. "My mother was _not _an evil genius."

"I think Rosie is," James said to Fred, ignoring Rose. "Remember that purple octopus thing she got us with when we broke her Chudley Cannons snitch?"

"An excellent point," Fred agreed. "But she's reluctant. We'll have to drag it out of her."

"A challenging task, but it could be worth it," James conceded.

Rose began reading loudly to cut off this ridiculous conversation.

**Harry and Ron looked incredulously at each other.**

"**Hermione, I don't think —"**

"**That could go seriously wrong —"**

**But Hermione had a steely glint in her eye not unlike the one Professor McGonagall sometimes had.**

"They're in trouble now," Fred intoned.

"**The potion will be useless without Crabbe's and Goyle's hair," she said sternly. "You do **_**want **_**to investigate Malfoy, don't you?"**

"**Oh, all right, all right," said Harry.**

"Owned," James whispered, shaking with suppressed laughter.

"There's no arguing with the McGonagall glint," Fred said sagely.

"Well, they've already done everything else! They can't just back out now because something might go wrong," Lily said with mild indignation.

"**But what about you? Whose hair are you ripping out?"**

"Now that's a conversation-starter," James laughed. "Remember that, Lils, Hugo. An excellent way to make friends when you get to Hogwarts."

Rose read over him.

"**I've already got mine!" said Hermione brightly, pulling a tiny bottle out of her pocket and showing them the single hair inside it. "Remember Millicent Bulstrode wrestling with me at the Dueling Club? She left this on my robes when she was trying to strangle me! And she's gone home for Christmas — so I'll just have to tell the Slytherins I've decided to come back."**

"That sounds… kind of dodgy," Teddy said slowly. "How does she know that hair is Millicent Bulstrode's? It could have come from anywhere."

"Yeah, and how exactly was Bulstrode supposed to have come back? The floo network is blocked at Hogwarts, at least for full travel," Rose added. "It will make her conspicuous. People will ask questions."

"Well, the whole plan is iffy at best," James pointed out. "You can't pull this off without pushing it a bit."

"But they're coming close to pushing it to the breaking point," Teddy said nervously. "I don't like the Bultsrode thing. It doesn't really take three of them to do this. Two are less conspicuous anyway. But I don't suppose there's any hope of persuading Hermione to stay behind," he added resignedly.

"Not at all likely," Albus agreed. "She still goes with Dad and Ron on missions half the time. As legal counsel or if that doesn't work she finds a way to get where they're going."

**When Hermione had bustled off to check on the Polyjuice Potion again, Ron turned to Harry with a doom-laden expression.**

"**Have you ever heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong?"**

"Yeah, this is extremely risky, even for them," Rose agreed.

"Well, can you think of a better way to get this done?" James demanded.

Rose couldn't, so she just kept reading.

**But to Harry's and Ron's utter amazement, stage one of the operation went just as smoothly as Hermione had said. **

"That's good," Lily breathed.

"And not that surprising," Teddy said. It seemed like the three of them had an unprecedented knack for pulling things off.

**They lurked in the deserted entrance hall after Christmas tea, waiting for Crabbe and Goyle who had remained alone at the Slytherin table, shoveling down fourth helpings of trifle. Harry had perched the chocolate cakes on the end of the banisters. **

"Yes, capitalize on their greed, stupidity, and piggish appetites," James nodded. "They deserve it."

**When they spotted Crabbe and Goyle coming out of the Great Hall, Harry and Ron hid quickly behind a suit of armor next to the front door.**

"**How thick can you get?" Ron whispered ecstatically as Crabbe gleefully pointed out the cakes to Goyle and grabbed them. **

"You said it, Uncle Ron," Fred said, looking incredulously at the book. "I know they're idiots – the fact gives me endless amusement – but come on! Who just _leaves _cakes sitting on the stairs if they're not spiked with something?"

"I can't believe Dad was friends with them," Scorpius said with equal incredulity. "No wonder he doesn't have them round anymore."

**Grinning stupidly, they stuffed the cakes whole into their large mouths. For a moment, both of them chewed greedily, looks of triumph on their faces. Then, without the smallest change of expression, they both keeled over backward onto the floor.**

"This is almost too easy," James with mild disbelief.

"This is only the first part," Rose reminded him. "I highly doubt it will stay this easy."

"It never does," Fred agreed ruefully.

**By far the hardest part was hiding them in the closet across the hall. **

"I bet," James sniggered. "They're like three times Dad's size."

"Closet must've been pretty cramped," Fred nodded offhandedly.

**Once they were safely stowed among the buckets and mops, Harry yanked out a couple of the bristles that covered Goyle's forehead and Ron pulled out several of Crabbe's hairs. They also stole their shoes, because their own were far too small for Crabbe- and Goyle-size feet. Then, still stunned at what they had just done, **

"Yes, your first identity theft often has that effect," Fred said wisely.

"And you have such authority on the matter," Rose muttered, rolling her eyes.

"You'll never know," Fred said with a deadpan stare.

**they sprinted up to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.**

**They could hardly see for the thick black smoke issuing from the stall in which Hermione was stirring the cauldron. **

"Er – that is supposed to happen, right?" Hugo asked nervously.

"I think so," Teddy said uncertainly. He was not a brilliant potion brewer.

**Pulling their robes up over their faces, Harry and Ron knocked softly on the door.**

"**Hermione?"**

**They heard the scrape of the lock and Hermione emerged, shiny-faced and looking anxious. Behind her they heard the **_**gloopgloop **_**of the bubbling, glutinous potion. Three glass tumblers stood ready on the toilet seat.**

"**Did you get them?" Hermione asked breathlessly.**

**Harry showed her Goyle's hair.**

"**Good. And I sneaked these spare robes out of the laundry," Hermione said, holding up a small sack. "You'll need bigger sizes once you're Crabbe and Goyle."**

"That's smart," Hugo said fervently. "I didn't even think of that. It'd be bad if they took the potion and then, like, Hulked out in their robes and then had to walk around in torn-up, too small robes."

"Hulked out?" Albus asked, raising an eyebrow.

"American Muggle comic," Hugo muttered. "Your dad got it for me. Never mind."

"Right, well, it's a good thing they've got Hermione around to think about stuff like that," Teddy agreed. "They'd be hopeless without her."

**The three of them stared into the cauldron. Close up, the potion looked like thick, dark mud, bubbling sluggishly.**

"Yum," James said casually.

"**I'm sure I've done everything right," said Hermione, nervously rereading the splotched page of **_**Moste Potente Potions. **_**"It looks like the book says it should . . . once we've drunk it, we'll have exactly an hour before we change back into ourselves."**

"That's kind of a tight timeframe," Rose murmured. "They don't even know where the Slytherin Common Room is, do they? I don't know where Hufflepuff's or Ravenclaw's are."

"That's because you're not as some of us," James said in a highly superior voice.

"You've got a cheat sheet," Rose reminded him, crossing her arms. "You wouldn't know where anything was if you hadn't spent the entire summer before your first year studying the Marauder's map."

"I am deeply insulted," James said with dignity.

"Hang on," Teddy said slowly. "I didn't give you the map until the morning you got on the train…"

James reddened a little. "I didn't _steal _it," he tried to explain. "I just… snuck it out of your stuff to look at it. I wanted to know where things were in caser – in case you didn't let me have it."

"Well, that's a major disappoint, Jamie," Teddy said seriously, giving James a wounded look. "I can't believe you went as far as to break into my room. I just don't know if I can trust you after hearing something like that, James…"

"No, I didn't – I'm sorry –" James began, looking flustered and miserable.

"Save it. The damage is done," Teddy interrupted, closing his eyes in a pained sort of way.

"But I'm sorry! It's just that it was _July _and you hadn't even _mentioned _the map and – what? Why are you laughing?"

Teddy shook his head and smothered his laughter in his hand. Then he rolled his eyes at James.

"I'd started _Auror _training, Jamie. And let's face it, you're no ninja. Don't you think I noticed you snooping around in my stuff?"

James looked put-out. "Why didn't you say anything, then?"

"Well, I would have, but it was just too much fun seeing how creative I could get with the hiding spots before you got suspicious. I mean, in my shoe, James? Why would I leave the map there?"

"I just thought you were being weird," James shrugged, still blushing as his brother, sister, and cousins snickered. "Why couldn't you just give it to me?"

Teddy grinned. "You can't just _give _the Marauders Map away – not unless it represents the legacy of the father the recipient never had a chance to know. You had to earn it."

James considered this. "Alright, I suppose I can count that as fair. But, seriously, in a bottle at the bottom of Timothy's tank? Did you have to hide it with the snapping turtle?"

"Marauders have to be fearless," Teddy shrugged, nodding at Rose to keep reading.

"**Now what?" Ron whispered.**

"**We separate it into three glasses and add the hairs."**

**Hermione ladled large dollops of the potion into each of the glasses. Then, her hand trembling, she shook Millicent Bulstrode's hair out of its bottle into the first glass.**

**The potion hissed loudly like a boiling kettle and frothed madly. A second later, it had turned a sick sort of yellow.**

"**Urgh — essence of Millicent Bulstrode," said Ron, eyeing it with loathing. "Bet it tastes disgusting."**

"Ew," Hugo said, screwing up his face. "I can't believe Mum's going to turn into that hag."

"Dad and Harry are going to be _Crabbe and Goyle,_" Rose pointed out.

'The entire matter is gross in my opinion," James said. "They've got some pretty steeled wills if they can stomach turning into three disgusting Slytherins."

"I'm torn between utter revulsion and great awe," said Fred, screwing up his eyes.

"**Add yours, then," said Hermione.**

**Harry dropped Goyle's hair into the middle glass and Ron put Crabbe's into the last one. Both glasses hissed and frothed: Goyle's turned the khaki color of a booger, Crabbe's a dark, murky brown.**

"They're going to drink that?" Lily gagged.

"**Hang on," said Harry as Ron and Hermione reached for their glasses. "We'd better not all drink them in here. . . . Once we turn into Crabbe and Goyle we won't fit. And Millicent Bulstrode's no pixie."**

"That… is a good point," Rose agreed.

"It's a good thing Dad remembered not everyone's as scrawny as they were or they'd be stuck in that bathroom stall until they turned back to normal," James sniggered.

"That would top the list of awkward predicaments to be discovered in," Fred laughed.

"**Good thinking," said Ron, unlocking the door. "We'll take separate stalls."**

**Careful not to spill a drop of his Polyjuice Potion, Harry slipped into the middle stall.**

"**Ready?" he called.**

"**Ready," came Ron's and Hermione's voices.**

"**One — two — three —"**

**Pinching his nose, Harry drank the potion down in two large gulps. It tasted like overcooked cabbage. **

"That's not too bad," Albus said optimistically. From the description he'd expected something a lot worse.

**Immediately, his insides started writhing as though he'd just swallowed live snakes**

"I spoke too soon," Albus amended, his voice hoarse. He wetted his lips, swallowing hard at the thought of swallowing live snakes.

— **doubled up, he wondered whether he was going to be sick — then a burning sensation spread rapidly from his stomach to the very ends of his fingers and toes — next, bringing him gasping to all fours, came a horrible melting feeling, as the skin all over his body bubbled like hot wax **

Several people winced at the description.

— **and before his eyes, his hands began to grow, the fingers thickened, the nails broadened, the knuckles were bulging like bolts — his shoulders stretched painfully and a prickling on his forehead told him that hair was**

**creeping down toward his eyebrows — his robes ripped as his chest expanded like a barrel bursting its hoops**

"The Hulk," Hugo whispered.

— **his feet were agony in shoes four sizes too small —**

**As suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. Harry lay face down on the stone-cold floor, listening to Myrtle gurgling morosely in the end toilet. **

"Well… that sounds… terribly unpleasant. Who would do that?" James asked.

"I dunno, who wouldn't risk expulsion and possible permanent mutilation to turn into Slytherins via severe pain and the sensation of your skin melting off?" Fred asked innocently.

"All in the name of justice," Teddy said solemnly. "Though this really _really _makes me glad I don't need that potion very often."

"No kidding," Rose muttered. This was a strong deterrent from joining the Aurors when she left school.

**With difficulty, he kicked off his shoes and stood up. So this was what it felt like, being Goyle. His large hand trembling, he pulled off his old robes, which were hanging a foot above his ankles, pulled on the spare ones, and laced up Goyle's boatlike shoes. He reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes and met only the short growth of wiry bristles, low on his forehead. Then he realized that his glasses were clouding his eyes because Goyle obviously didn't need them — he took them off and called, "Are you two okay?" Goyle's low rasp of a voice issued from his mouth.**

"**Yeah," came the deep grunt of Crabbe from his right. Harry unlocked his door and stepped in front of the cracked mirror. Goyle stared back at him out of dull, deepset eyes. Harry scratched his ear. So did Goyle.**

"That would be so weird," Hugo said, staring off into space as if trying to imagine it.

But Rose read over him. It had not escaped her notice that her mother had not responded to Harry's question.

**Ron's door opened. They stared at each other. Except that he looked pale and shocked, Ron was indistinguishable from Crabbe, from the pudding-bowl haircut to the long, gorilla arms.**

"**This is unbelievable," said Ron, approaching the mirror and prodding Crabbe's flat nose. "**_**Unbelievable.**_**"**

"It is pretty crazy," Fred agreed.

"And aside from the Slytherin part – and all the unpleasantness – pretty awesome," James said excitedly. Now came the clandestine sneaking around part, infiltrating enemy territory, gathering information, the exciting stuff his dad never told him about due to reasons of 'discretion'. He couldn't wait.

"**We'd better get going," said Harry, loosening the watch that was cutting into Goyle's thick wrist. "We've still got to find out where the Slytherin common room is. I only hope we can find someone to follow . . ."**

"That's a good plan," James nodded.

"Except that it's obviously rather late on Christmas day and the chances of finding anybody wondering around with a monster on the loose are slim to none," Rose couldn't help but point out logically.

"Your optimism is always appreciated, Rosie," Fred commended.

**Ron, who had been gazing at Harry, said, "You don't know how bizarre it is to see Goyle **_**thinking.**_**" **

Several people burst out laughing.

"That sounds like it would be a very strange and incredible sight to behold," Fred chortled.

**He banged on Hermione's door. "C'mon, we need to go —"**

**A high-pitched voice answered him.**

"**I — I don't think I'm going to come after all. You go on without me."**

They all exchanged anxious looks and Rose felt her stomach drop.

"Why's she not coming all of a sudden?" Hugo asked nervously.

"I don't know," Teddy muttered, leaning forward. "The potion seems to have worked for the other two…"

He thought about the hair Hermione had plucked off her robes to use. It must not have been Millicent Bullstrode's. But then who – or what – was it from? He hoped very much that Hermione was okay.

"**Hermione, we know Millicent Bulstrode's ugly, no one's going to know it's you —"**

"Somehow, I don't think that's the problem," Albus muttered, biting his lip worriedly.

"**No — really — I don't think I'll come. You two hurry up, you're wasting time —"**

**Harry looked at Ron, bewildered.**

"_**That **_**looks more like Goyle," said Ron. "That's how he looks every time a teacher asks him a question."**

Fred and James sniggered, but the rest were too focused on the story and what was going on with Hermione to appreciate the humor.

"**Hermione, are you okay?" said Harry through the door.**

"**Fine — I'm fine — go on —"**

**Harry looked at his watch. Five of their precious sixty minutes had already passed.**

"**We'll meet you back here, all right?" he said.**

"I suppose they have got to get going," Rose said, but she didn't like it.

Teddy didn't seem to like it either. He knew the potion could be very dangerous if something went wrong. Hermione alone in that bathroom could be very dangerous if anything happened.

And although he didn't know it yet, that bathroom was probably one of the most dangerous places for anybody to be alone for quite another reason.

**Harry and Ron opened the door of the bathroom carefully, checked that the coast was clear, and set off.**

"**Don't swing your arms like that," Harry muttered to Ron.**

"**Eh?"**

"**Crabbe holds them sort of stiff. . . ."**

"**How's this?"**

"**Yeah, that's better. . . ."**

"Dad must be really observant," James commented. "I don't pay any attention to how my classmates hold their arms."

"Your dad is extremely observant about stuff like that," Teddy nodded. "How do you think he can bust you ninety percent of the time you're up to something? But it's pretty important in the field. It's probably saved his life on missions a hundred times…"

Teddy trailed off, a though occurring to him as to _why _Harry was so observant of people. But he pushed it away. He was being paranoid, reading too much into every little characteristic and habit his godfather had. The Dursleys didn't have anything to do with Harry's observation skills, did they? Harry had told Teddy himself that his aunt and uncle had never… he'd never had a reason to keep one eye on them all the time. Dudley on the other hand…

Teddy shoved the idea away angrily. The way Harry had grown up disturbed him, made everything shifty beneath his footing. So he tried to push it out of his mind for now, to forget about the Dusleys and revel in the fact that Harry had gotten the better of them in the end – that he had ended up much happier than they ever could be.

**They went down the marble staircase. All they needed now was a Slytherin that they could follow to the Slytherin common room, **

"It's for situations like these that I think having a Slytherin whistle would be beneficial," Fred said. "Anytime you need a Slytherin, just whip it out and BAM there one is."

**but there was nobody around.**

"I could have told them there wouldn't be," Rose muttered.

"**Any ideas?" muttered Harry.**

"**The Slytherins always come up to breakfast from over there," said Ron, nodding at the entrance to the dungeons. **

"And there are those deduction skills that make him a brilliant Auror," Albus grinned.

**The words had barely left his mouth when a girl with long, curly hair emerged from the entrance.**

"**Excuse me," said Ron, hurrying up to her. "We've forgotten the way to our common room."**

"You know," James said pensively, "I think the only way that could be a plausible excuse is coming from Crabbe or Goyle."

"No kidding," Teddy snickered. "The Goyle I went to school with spent half of first year wondering around looking for his common room."

"**I beg your pardon?" said the girl stiffly. "**_**Our **_**common room? **_**I'm **_**a Ravenclaw."**

**She walked away, looking suspiciously back at them.**

"Obviously she doesn't know Crabbe and Goyle very well," said James.

**Harry and Ron hurried down the stone steps into the darkness, their footsteps echoing particularly loudly as Crabbe's and Goyle's huge feet hit the floor, feeling that this wasn't going to be as easy as they had hoped.**

"When is it ever?" Albus mumbled.

**The labyrinthine passages were deserted. They walked deeper and deeper under the school, constantly checking their watches to see how much time they had left. After a quarter of an hour, just when they were getting desperate, they heard a sudden movement ahead.**

"**Ha!" said Ron excitedly. "There's one of them now!"**

**The figure was emerging from a side room. As they hurried nearer, however, their hearts sank. It wasn't a Slytherin, it was Percy.**

"Huh?" Fred said in confusion. "What's Uncle Percy doing down there?"

"I dunno," James shrugged.

Teddy wondered if it had anything to do with the suspected girlfriend or if Percy was just patrolling on prefect duty.

"**What're you doing down here?" said Ron in surprise.**

**Percy looked affronted.**

"**That," he said stiffly, "is none of your business. It's Crabbe, isn't it?"**

Probably the girlfriend thing then, Teddy thought, smirking to himself.

"**Wh — oh, yeah," said Ron.**

"Way to keep your cover, Dad," Rose sighed, rolling her eyes.

"It really is a good thing they're impersonating idiots," Teddy said thoughtfully. "Mistakes will be way easier to cover up."

"**Well, get off to your dormitories," said Percy sternly. "It's not safe to go wandering around dark corridors these days."**

"He is," Fred pointed out.

"Yeah, but he's a prefect," James reminded his cousin. "Nothing would _dare _to attack a prefect, you know. It might end up in detention."

"_**You **_**are," Ron pointed out.**

"An excellent point, Uncle Ron,' Fred told the book smugly.

"**I," said Percy, drawing himself up, **

"Here it comes," James muttered.

"**am a prefect. Nothing's about to attack **_**me.**_**"**

James made a gesture as if to say "what did I tell you?"

**A voice suddenly echoed behind Harry and Ron. Draco Malfoy was strolling toward them, **

"This is the only time that sentence could be a good thing," James said.

Scorpius ducked his head, ears turning pink.

"I'd reserve judgment," Teddy said quickly. "For all we know, Draco Malfoy was important in ending the war."

"Do you really think so?" Scorpius asked doubtfully.

Teddy hesitated. The honest answer was 'no' but he didn't want to give it.

"It's a possibility," he said instead, trying not to let the doubt seep into his voice.

Scorpius shrugged and stared moodily at the ground. He'd known his father had fought on the wrong side for a long time. It wasn't as if it was a newsflash. Now the question was how far had he gone? And it seemed like he was about to get an answer.

**and for the first time in his life, Harry was pleased to see him.**

"**There you are," he drawled, looking at them. "Have you two been pigging out in the Great Hall all this time? I've been looking for you; I want to show you something really funny."**

"His face?" Fred guessed.

"His grades?" James suggested.

"I'll bet it's a picture of his father," Fred said, snapping his fingers.

"Don't be mean," Rose snapped, glancing at Scorpius.

But Scorpius didn't seem upset. He gave them a weak smile before returning his focus to the book.

**Malfoy glanced witheringly at Percy.**

"**And what're you doing down here, Weasley?" he sneered.**

**Percy looked outraged.**

"**You want to show a bit more respect to a school prefect!" he said. "I don't like your attitude!"**

**Malfoy sneered and motioned for Harry and Ron to follow him. Harry almost said something apologetic to Percy but caught himself just in time. He and Ron hurried after Malfoy, who said as they turned into the next passage, "That Peter Weasley —"**

"**Percy," Ron corrected him automatically.**

Teddy winced a little, but reminded himself that they were all only twelve. The job didn't have to be done perfectly yet.

"**Whatever," said Malfoy. "I've noticed him sneaking around a lot lately. **

"Really?" Fred said, curiosity piqued. "Has old Uncle Percy been deceiving us? All of those pompous talks about rules and being a prefect and _he's _been the one sneaking around?"

"Wonder what he's been up to," James said interestedly. "Suppose it's something against the rules?"

Teddy grinned to himself, now almost certain what was keeping Percy so busy in this book. It wasn't against the rules, but he could understand why Percy had wanted to keep it a secret. He and Vic had managed a year and a half before James caught them 'saying goodbye' on the platform. The family wouldn't let it rest after that.

**And I bet I know what he's up to. **

Fred and James leaned in eagerly, and even most of the others looked curious. What could their poker-straight, rule-hugging uncle be up to?

**He thinks he's going to catch Slytherin's heir single-handed."**

Everyone tensed. Did that mean anything? Was Malfoy keeping an eye out for people trying to catch _him_?

"Somehow I don't really see Uncle Percy as the search-and-destroy type," Fred said. "He'd rather fight law-breakers on paper or he'd have joined up with Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron."

**He gave a short, derisive laugh. Harry and Ron exchanged excited looks.**

**Malfoy paused by a stretch of bare, damp stone wall. **

"Home sweet home," Fred said sarcastically.

"How do you two know what the entrance to the Slytherin common room looks like?" Albus asked.

"All the things you never need to know," Fred answered cryptically.

"Who wants to bet this knowledge is from a failed attempt at a prank?" Rose whispered loudly.

"Always with the insults, Rosie," Fred said in a mock-wounded voice.

"What can I say? You're stupid meter is particularly high today," Rose answered with a cheeky grin.

"**What's the new password again?" he said to Harry.**

"**Er —" said Harry.**

"**Oh, yeah — **_**pure-blood **_**!" **

"How creative," James said dryly.

**said Malfoy, not listening, and a stone door concealed in the wall slid open. Malfoy marched through it, and Harry and Ron followed him.**

"The point of no return," Fred said dramatically. "They're behind enemy lines now, in too deep. It's all or nothing, the pressure's on."

**The Slytherin common room was a long, low underground room with rough stone walls and ceiling from which round, greenish lamps were hanging on chains. A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in high-backed chairs.**

"That an accurate description?" James called loudly to Scorpius.

"Er – yeah," Scorpius said.

He found it a little odd to hear the description of his common room. He was used to the descriptions of more public places in the school, familiar rooms or hallways, but this part of his school life had remained separate from the story, almost allowing him to maintain an illusion that it all was just a story. He was more separated from the events than the others, save for these incidents with his father. But for some reason, hearing the familiar description of his common room – however unpleasant he found that particular room – reminded him how real all of this was. All of it.

"**Wait here," said Malfoy to Harry and Ron, motioning them to a pair of empty chairs set back from the fire. "I'll go and get it — my father's just sent it to me —"**

**Wondering what Malfoy was going to show them, Harry and Ron sat down, doing their best to look at home.**

"Not an easy thing to do in the Slytherin common room under any circumstances," Albus muttered. He and Rose had hung out in there with Scorpius over the Christmas break while the rest of Slytherin was at home, just to see what it was like. He hadn't liked it very much. Especially the giant paintings and statues of snakes. But the creepiest thing had been the snake skin coiled on a plaque above the fireplace. It had made him even more grateful that he was not in Slytherin.

**Malfoy came back a minute later, holding what looked like a newspaper clipping. He thrust it under Ron's nose.**

"**That'll give you a laugh," he said.**

**Harry saw Ron's eyes widen in shock. He read the clipping quickly, gave a very forced laugh, and handed it to Harry. It had been clipped out of the **_**Daily Prophet, **_**and it said:**

**INQUIRY AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC**

**Arthur Weasley, Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, was today fined fifty Galleons **

"What?" several people exclaimed.

"Why?" Hugo asked indignantly.

Rose read on.

**for bewitching a Muggle car. **

"Oh," Hugo said, looking subdued.

"That sucks," Fred said angrily.

**Mr. Lucius Malfoy, a governor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the enchanted car crashed earlier this year, called today for Mr. Weasley's resignation.**

Rose kept reading before anyone could voice the outrage spreading across every face. The next words were only going to bring more furious outbursts.

"**Weasley has brought the Ministry into disrepute," Mr. Malfoy told our reporter. "He is clearly unfit to draw up our laws and his ridiculous Muggle Protection Act should be scrapped immediately."**

Rose set down the book, sputtering furiously. "That – that – what has the Muggle Protection Act got to do with a flying car?" she exclaimed.

"That piece of slime!" James snarled. "Granddad's probably the only one drawing up any _decent _laws. He's just using this to scrap laws that would get him into trouble!"

"Thank you captain obvious," Rose snapped, red with outrage.

"And Malfoy thought that was funny?" Fred said furiously.

"He's got a nasty sense of humor," James spat.

"Keep reading, Rosie," Hugo instructed, looking angry.

Rose was still seething, but she complied for the blood pressures of those around her.

**Mr. Weasley was unavailable for comment, although his wife told reporters to clear off or she'd set the family ghoul on them.**

This effectively diffused the fury as the group burst out laughing.

"Go Gran!" Fred cried, punching the air in triumph.

"That's awesome," James agreed emphatically.

"Gran's the best," Lily said, grinning.

"Absolutely," Hugo agreed.

"**Well?" said Malfoy impatiently as Harry handed the clipping back to him. "Don't you think it's funny?"**

"Oh, it rings with hilarity," Fred said sarcastically.

"Yes, the tearing down of others is always a celebratory comic event," Rose said acidly.

"You wouldn't be able to stand the Slytherin common room then," Scorpius told her quietly. "That's about the main source of entertainment there."

"**Ha, ha," said Harry bleakly.**

"**Arthur Weasley loves Muggles so much he should snap his wand in half and go and join them," said Malfoy scornfully.**

"Well, they'd make a hell of a lot better company than him," Fred said nastily.

"

"**You'd never know the Weasleys were purebloods, the way they behave."**

"Yes and we're all marvelously thankful for that," James said loftily. "_Decency _is generally a valued characteristic."

**Ron's — or rather, Crabbe's — face was contorted with fury.**

"As it should be," Fred said approvingly.

"Not if they don't want Malfoy getting suspicious," Teddy intoned.

"**What's up with you, Crabbe?" snapped Malfoy.**

"See what I mean?" said Teddy, raising an eyebrow.

"**Stomachache," Ron grunted.**

"**Well, go up to the hospital wing and give all those Mudbloods **

There were several hisses at the word and Scorpius lowered his head.

**a kick from me," said Malfoy, snickering.**

"I'm sorry, but he really is a fowl jerk," Lily said sniffily, crossing her arms.

"You've got that right," Fred told her, clapping her on the shoulder.

"Not to mention the concern for his friend just oozes off of him," Rose said with dangerous sarcasm.

Scorpius bit his lip. He had expected this, but it didn't make listening to his father's horrible remarks in such high concentration any more tolerable. He wondered what it would be like to go home and have a conversation with this same person. Would he hear something different in his father's voice now? He was almost afraid to find out.

"**You know, I'm surprised the **_**Daily Prophet **_**hasn't reported all these attacks yet," **

"Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what the school governors want," Rose said sarcastically. "Broadcast what a state the school is in and start a panic."

"Well, he does have a point somewhere in there," Teddy said. "Scorpius's grandfather was a school Governor, wasn't he? I'd have thought he'd have loved to have this opportunity to discredit Dumbledore. I wonder why he hasn't managed to get anything out yet. He's got enough connections."

"Unless he doesn't want to connect himself with the whole thing," Fred said pointedly. "You know, in case his family is behind it all."

"We'll see," Teddy said patiently.

"We will," Fred agreed. "And soon."

Scorpius felt his stomach flip with nerves again.

**he went on thoughtfully. "I suppose Dumbledore's trying to hush it all up.**

**He'll be sacked if it doesn't stop soon. Father's always said old Dumbledore's the worst thing that's ever happened to this place.**

"He would say that," Scorpius muttered. "Dumbledore isn't the sort of person he could bully or bribe."

Scorpius had never much liked his grandfather because of his penchant for those tactics. Either the man was trying to steer him with an iron grip or he was trying to buy him off.

**He loves Muggle-borns. A decent headmaster would never've let slime like that Creevey in."**

"Hey, Colin Creevey is awesome," James said indignantly.

"And a decent headmaster lets everyone who can use magic in," Rose added, scowling down at the book. "If he wants a discriminatory school, he should go to one of those little private places in the cities that start up and die within the same decade. Hogwarts doesn't let pure-blood cowards with twisted morals intimidate it."

**Malfoy started taking pictures with an imaginary camera and did a cruel but accurate impression of Colin: " 'Potter, can I have your picture, Potter? Can I have your autograph? Can I lick your shoes, please, Potter?' "**

"Okay, Colin is a little… er, hyper, but he's a thousand times better than that stuck-up prick," James spat.

"Maybe we shouldn't, erm, insult Draco Malfoy so much," Teddy said with a pointed look at Scorpius.

"No, go ahead," Scorpius said a little bitterly. "He deserves all the insults you can think of."

"That is not a challenge," Rose said quickly as Fred opened his mouth, eyes glinting gleefully.

**He dropped his hands and looked at Harry and Ron.**

"**What's the **_**matter **_**with you two?"**

**Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Malfoy seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.**

"**Saint Potter, the Mudbloods' friend," said Malfoy slowly.**

"Yes, have a problem with that?" James asked dangerously.

"Of course he does," Albus said, rolling his eyes a little.

"**He's another one with no proper wizard feeling,**

"Dad's got the right attitude," Albus countered. "He doesn't have to hate a whole group of people for no reason just to make himself feel better."

**or he wouldn't go around with that jumped-up Granger Mudblood. **

"Hey!" nearly everyone chorused indignantly.

"Mum's not jumped-up," Hugo said fiercely, even though he wasn't entirely sure what jumped-up meant.

**And people think **_**he's **_**Slytherin's heir!"**

"Even Malfoy thinks it's ridiculous!" James exclaimed.

"Yeah, but he _knows _who it is," Fred reminded James.

"Maybe," Teddy added.

**Harry and Ron waited with bated breath: Malfoy was surely seconds away from telling them it was him **

Scorpius held his breath, his heart thumping loudly in his ears. Here it came, the moment of truth. And now it was here, he almost wanted to stick his fingers in his ears and hum loudly.

— **but then —**

Scorpius's heart jumped.

"**I **_**wish **_**I knew who it **_**is**_**," said Malfoy petulantly. "I could help them."**

"Wait, what?" Fred said in confusion. "It's _not _him?"

"Nope," Teddy said, sneaking a look at Scorpius.

"Maybe he knows something's up and he's lying," Fred suggested.

Rose glowered at him.

"It's not him!" Albus said forcefully, clapping Scorpius on the shoulder. "Hear that Scorp? You're dad's got nothing to do with this."

Scorpius blinked and let out his breath in a long gust. "Yeah."

And then he felt himself sag a little with relief, as if a lead weight had been lifted from his chest. It wasn't his dad. _His dad _hadn't done any of this. He wasn't attacking people. He didn't seem to have a problem with the person who was, but he was only a kid, right? Talking about it was different from actually doing something like this. He could grow out of talking about it. Scorpius dropped his head to hide the first real smile that had spread across his face in several chapters.

"But, if it's not him… then who is it?" James asked.

"Well there's a whole upper class of Slytherins to start with," Teddy pointed out.

"But it was opened before!" James exclaimed. "There can't possibly be more connected people at Hogwarts than we already know about."

"There's something else going on here," Teddy said determinedly. "We just don't know what it is."

"Okay, fantastic guess, Ted. I don't know how you figure these things out," James said, rolling his eyes.

"So this whole thing was a waste of time?" Lily asked. "If Malfoy's not the one doing all of this, they just wasted two months and now something's up with Hermione and it was all for nothing!"

"Maybe not," Teddy said over the put-out muttering. "Malfoy might know something, even if he's not the one behind it all. He's pretty connected in that house at the moment."

"But he's just said he's got no idea who it is!" Hugo pointed out.

"Yeah, but he still might let something slip. It was worth checking out, even if it didn't turn up anything," Teddy insisted.

"I suppose we'll see," Rose sighed, turning back to the book.

**Ron's jaw dropped so that Crabbe looked even more clueless than usual. Fortunately, Malfoy didn't notice, and Harry, thinking fast, said, "You must have some idea who's behind it all. . . ."**

"**You know I haven't, Goyle, how many times do I have to tell you?"**

Hugo glanced doubtfully at Teddy. "You still think this was worth it?"

"Sometimes you've got to down a million dead ends before you find a lead," Teddy shrugged. "That's one of the first things they teach you in training. The older aurors have grand old time sending us on wild goose chases under the guise of teaching us diligence."

**snapped Malfoy. "And Father won't tell me **_**anything **_**about the last time the Chamber was opened either. **

"Why would he know?" James asked suspiciously.

And just like that the weight that had just lifted slammed back down on Scorpius. Was it ever going to possible to escape the sins of his family?

Albus caught his eye and shook his head firmly. "Don't even go there Scorp. Even if they had something to do with it, it's got nothing to do with you."

Scorpius nodded and tried to push away the mingled shame and misery his father and grandfather's attitudes kept bringing down on him. For some reason he found it easier than before.

**Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, **

"See?" Albus muttered to his friend. "It's just your dad trying to puff himself up, look like he knows more than he does. Your grandfather doesn't have anything more to do with this than your dad."

Scorpius nodded.

"Yeah, probably. I just wish they weren't so keen to be at the center of stuff like this. This is why my whole house hates me. They tried to be more important than they were and then it blew up in their faces."

"Well, at least you won't make that mistake, right?" Albus said bracingly.

"Far from it," Scorpius said fervently.

**but he knows all about it, and he says that it was all kept quiet and it'll look suspicious if I know too much about it. But I know one thing — last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood **_**died. **_

"Died?" Lily whispered, eyes wide. "Is that true?"

"I don't know," Teddy said sadly, putting an arm around her shoulders again.

Hugo bit his lip, James and Fred looked uncharacteristically serious. Rose exchanged looks with Albus and Scorpius. Being petrified seemed bad enough, but if this monster could _kill, _that changed everything.

"That Colin kid," Hugo said nervously. "You all keep saying he died. Does that mean… that people who get attacked… are they all going to die?"

Nobody said anything. They didn't know.

"I don't want anyone to die," Lily whispered.

"No one does," Teddy told her gently.

"But they will," James said in strange voice. "We know a lot of people got killed when our parents were in school. If it doesn't happen now, it'll just happen later. Reading all the details won't change the outcome."

"Thanks James, but I don't think we really need to hear that," Teddy said quietly, swallowing past the sudden lump that had risen in his throat. It had occurred to him, not for the first time, but for the first real time what exactly they would have to read about in the later books when the war started up again. If they thought this was bad…

"So, the monster sneaking around the school picking students off one by one is deadly now," Fred said slowly. "That's fantastic."

"And it's after Mum," Hugo said suddenly.

Rose took a breath and started reading again.

**So I bet it's a matter of time before one of them's killed this time. . . . **

Lily whimpered and Albus and Scorpius exchanged another worried look.

**I hope it's Granger," he said with relish.**

Rose choked a little on the words. She dropped the book and the words rippled out in scorching circles as the others absorbed their meaning.

"The little –" James said in a strangled sort of voice.

"How could he say something like that?" Lily asked in a horrified whisper.

"He's a bastard, that's how," Hugo spat to general astonishment, especially form his sister. But he was to shocked and upset to care and the others were too outraged to say anything about it.

Scorpius had gone rather white again, a look of sickened astonishment on his face. There was no excuse for this one. There was no way to shift aside the fact that his father had relished the idea of another student being killed. It was no good telling himself he'd grow out of it or that he was young and stupid. Scorpius was younger now than his father had been when he'd said that and the thought of any of his classmates dying – even the ones he couldn't stand – horrified him. It wasn't just his dad being stupid, it was an inbred attitude, a part of who he had been, and the depth of that attitude scared Scorpius. More than just a little. He wondered what exactly his father had done before the end of the war if this was his attitude at twelve.

"He thinks he's being cool," Teddy said with revulsion. "He thinks if he talks tough like that people will think he's cool, the cold, aloof son of a Death Eater. That's status in that house at that time. He doesn't know what he's saying, what it really means. Talking about it is different from acting on it."

"It's still a pretty sick thing to talk about," James snarled.

"He didn't grow up like we did," Teddy went on doggedly. "We all grew up around death, around the impact of war, the reality of the devastation. We can appreciate it better than he can. I'll bet he had never even visited a grave before. He was more naïve than we ever got a chance to be. And he just wanted to sound cool. I'm sure he found out too soon what exactly he was saying there."

"I just – it's sick that _that _is what he thought made him cool," said Rose roughly.

"Yeah, it is," Teddy agreed.

After a moment more of silence, Rose picked up the book again and turned the page, forcing herself to continue reading in as calm a voice as she could manage.

**Ron was clenching Crabbe's gigantic fists. Feeling that it would be a bit of a giveaway if Ron punched Malfoy,**

"He'd deserve it," James muttered, through clenched teeth.

**Harry shot him a warning look and said, "D'you know if the person who opened the Chamber last time was caught?"**

"**Oh, yeah . . . whoever it was was expelled," said Malfoy. "They're probably still in Azkaban."**

"**Azkaban?" said Harry, puzzled.**

"He hadn't heard about Azkaban?" James asked incredulously, forgetting his fury for a moment. "Merlin, I can't believe no one ever said anything about it. It's weird how clueless Dad was."

"**Azkaban — **_**the wizard prison, **_**Goyle," said Malfoy, looking at him in disbelief. "Honestly, if you were any slower, you'd be going backward."**

Fred bit his lip to stop from laughing. He was _not _going to find anything that little creep said funny unless it was unintentional. Not after what he'd said about his aunt.

**He shifted restlessly in his chair and said, "Father says to keep my head down and let the Heir of Slytherin get on with it. He says the school needs ridding of all the Mudblood filth, **

More growls, more disgusted looks.

"And that's not coming from a confused kid," Scorpius muttered.

He had never liked his grandfather. But he hadn't known how twisted his mindset was. He wondered how much of this his grandfather would still agree with.

**but not to get mixed up in it. Of course, he's got a lot on his plate at the moment. You know the Ministry of Magic raided our manor last week?"**

"Excellent," Fred and James chorused with relish.

"Hope they found some good stuff on him," Fred said vindictively.

"Probably not," Scorpius said dully. "There's all kinds of hiding places in our house. I don't think Grandfather would leave anything incriminating around."

"There you go crushing dreams again," Fred sighed in disappointment.

**Harry tried to force Goyle's dull face into a look of concern.**

"Why? He doesn't deserve it," said Fred. "It might make him doubt the assumption that the world revolves around his fat head."

As upset as he was with his father, Scocpius couldn't help but feel a reflexive pang of irritation at that comment. His father wasn't at all like that now. Too cowed by the last war to have any kind of ego. But if he was perfectly honest, he was relieved that he could still get upset on his father's behalf. It reassured him that there wasn't so much of a rift between them that he couldn't find a way back across it.

"**Yeah . . ." said Malfoy. "Luckily, they didn't find much. Father's got some **_**very **_**valuable Dark Arts stuff. **

"Oh yeah," James said under his breath. "Gotta keep that stuff safe. Honestly, how can people have stuff like that and not know they're evil? I mean, what do they think they're going to do with it? Spew out flowers and fluffy little bunnies? I mean, it's got _dark _right in the title!"

"It's not always as cut and dry as that," Teddy said quietly. "A lot of people think dark magic shouldn't be illegal and that people are just too afraid. They think they can control it and that the outcome is worth it. And sometimes it is, for that person. But usually it's really, really not."

"Like I said, it's got _dark _right in the name. People should take a hint."

**But luckily, we've got our own secret chamber under the drawing-room floor —"**

"**Ho!" said Ron.**

"Not so secret anymore!" Hugo said gleefully. "I'll bet Granddad'll bust 'em now!"

**Malfoy looked at him. So did Harry. Ron blushed. Even his hair was turning red. His nose was also slowly lengthening **

"Oh no!" Lily said, eyes going wide. "They're out of time!"

"They've got to get out of there, _now_," Teddy said tensely.

"Can you imagine what would happen if they changed back in the Slytherin common room?" Albus said in horror.

"I don't think I want to," Rose said and quickly began reading again.

— **their hour was up, Ron was turning back into himself, and from the look**

**of horror he was suddenly giving Harry, he must be, too.**

**They both jumped to their feet.**

"**Medicine for my stomach," Ron grunted, and without further ado they sprinted the length of the Slytherin common room, hurled themselves at the stone wall, and dashed up the passage, hoping against hope that Malfoy hadn't noticed anything. **

"Yeah, 'cause that's not conspicuous at all," James drawled sarcastically.

"Ron had a sort of decent excuse," Teddy said hopefully. "And Crabbe and Goyle are idiots, so no one expects them to act normal…"

"But the potion's gone, right? So they can't prove anything," Albus pointed out.

"We hope, anyway," Rose said darkly and returned to the book.

**Harrycould feel his feet slipping around in Goyle's huge shoes and had to hoist up his robes as he shrank; they crashed up the steps into the dark entrance hall, which was full of a muffled pounding coming from the closet where they'd locked Crabbe and Goyle. **

"And then there's that," Albus sighed. He'd forgotten about the real Crabbe and Goyle, who would no doubt spread the story about how they'd been drugged, locked in a closet, and robbed of their shoes.

"Might just be put down to a prank," James offered. "Or people might think they just did it to themselves out of sheer stupidity."

"Not that far from a reasonable explanation," Fred agreed. "And a really great bonus."

**Leaving their shoes outside the closet door, they sprinted in their socks up the marble staircase toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.**

"**Well, it wasn't a complete waste of time," Ron panted, closing the bathroom door behind them. "I know we still haven't found out who's doing the attacks, but I'm going to write to Dad tomorrow and tell him to check under the Malfoys' drawing room."**

"Yes, and that will be totally worth it!" Hugo beamed, an unfamiliar glint of something close to vindictiveness in his eye.

"You're really pleased about this, aren't you, Hue?" Fred said, regarding his younger cousin with curiosity.

"Nobody can say all those nasty things bout Granddad and get away with it," Hugo said passionately.

**Harry checked his face in the cracked mirror. He was back to normal. **

"Thank god," James muttered.

"At least changing back isn't nearly as painful as changing," Lily said brightly.

**He put his glasses on as Ron hammered on the door of Hermione's stall.**

Lily and Hugo exchanged anxious looks and the others looked apprehensively at the book, wondering what was wrong with Hermione and hoping it had worn off with the potion.

"**Hermione, come out, we've got loads to tell you —"**

"**Go away!" Hermione squeaked.**

They all looked at each other.

"What happened to her?" Hugo asked again.

Rose kept reading for an answer.

**Harry and Ron looked at each other.**

"**What's the matter?" said Ron. "You must be back to normal by now, we are —"**

**But Moaning Myrtle glided suddenly through the stall door.**

**Harry had never seen her looking so happy.**

"Oh no," Rose groaned. "That means it's got to be _awful_."

"What kind of awful?" Albus asked tentatively. "Like awful in general or girl-awful?"

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean, Albus Severus Potter?" Rose asked dangerously.

Albus quailed under her look. "Just, you know, like her nose is all deformed now or her eyebrows disappeared or… never mind. I didn't mean anything…" he wisely stopped talking at that point.

But before Rose could launch into a long, furious tirade, Scorpius yanked the book out of her hands and started to read.

But he had barely opened his mouth when Rose whirled on him, grabbing for the book.

"Give it back to me, Scorpius! It's my turn!" she said, grabbing for the book. But he held it out of her reach, smirking slightly.

"Nope."

"Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy – oh yes, don't think I don't know your middle name too – give me that book back right now!"

"Only if you promise to just keep reading and lecture Al's ears off about sexist comments later."

"I'll lecture your ears off about something."

"Hey James, catch," Scorpius called, but before he could throw the book, Rose grabbed his arm, the fingers of her other hand just short of reaching the book.

"Okay, fine, I promise! Just let me finish the chapter."

"You swear on Merlin's wand?"

"Yes, whatever."

"You've got to swear it, Rose or I can't give this back to you."

Rose rolled her eyes, jumping to her feet and lunging for the book, but Scorpius was too quick for her. He hugged the book to his chest so tightly that she would have had to rip it to tear it away from him.

"I swear on Merlin's wand, no lectures," Rose said impatiently, holding out a hand for the book.

Scorpius blinked. "Wow. That was easier than I thought it would be. This power, I should really take advantage of it. Swear to do my summer Herbology essay."

"Scorpius!"

"Fine, fine, here, keep your hair on."

He held out the book and Rose snatched it back and dropped to the ground with a huff of irritation.

Albus and Scorpius exchanged smirks. Albus was glad to see Scorpius smirking again. He guessed Rose was too and it was probably the only reason she hadn't wrestled the book out of his hands.

"**Ooooooh, wait till you see," she said. "It's **_**awful **_**—"**

**They heard the lock slide back and Hermione emerged, sobbing, her robes pulled up over her head.**

Albus was tempted to give Rose a pointed look, but decided not to push it.

"What's wrong with her?" Lily asked.

"**What's up?" said Ron uncertainly. "Have you still got Millicent's nose or something?"**

**Hermione let her robes fall and Ron backed into the sink.**

They all leaned forward, worried and curious at the same time.

**Her face was covered in black fur.**

"What happened!" Hugo yelped as the others made noises of shock.

"I thought it might be something like that," Teddy said resignedly. "That was a dodgy way to get a hair. It wasn't Millicent's."

"Who's was it? Sasquatch?" James demanded.

"Some kind of animal," Teddy said grimly. "It's not supposed to be used to turn into animals. That's not wearing off quickly."

"What?" Lily spluttered. "You mean she'll have to walk around with a furry face?"

Teddy hesitated. "She'll have to go to the hospital wing and hope Madam Pomfrey doesn't recognize what happened and get them expelled."

"Or she could just, you know, hibernate or something," James sniggered.

Rose shot him a glare and kept reading.

**Her eyes had turned yellow and there were long, pointed ears poking through her hair.**

Fred and James were smothering laughter, Lily and Hugo both looked mildly horrified. Teddy was still frowning in concern, hoping that it was just physical appearance and no serious damage. They'd told them more than one horror story about Polyjuice Potion in training to dissuade people from using it too flippantly.

"**It was a c-cat hair!" she howled. "M-Millicent Bulstrode m-must have a cat! And the p-potion isn't supposed to be used for animal transformations!"**

"**Uh-oh," said Ron.**

"Understatement of the century," Rose muttered.

"**You'll be teased something **_**dreadful,**_**" said Myrtle happily.**

"Does she have to be so happy about this?" Lily asked, irritated.

"**It's okay, Hermione," said Harry quickly. "We'll take you up to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey never asks too many questions. . . ."**

"She usually doesn't want to know," Fred muttered to James.

"Too true," James muttered back, smirking slightly.

"I don't know if that will hold true for this," Teddy said dubiously.

**It took a long time to persuade Hermione to leave the bathroom.**

"I'll bet," Rose said fervently. "I'd stay locked up in that stall until I was back to normal. No one would get me to leave.

**Moaning Myrtle sped them on their way with a hearty guffaw. "Wait till everyone finds out you've got a **_**tail **_**!"**

"Okay, maybe that would make me want to get out of there," Rose amended, putting the book down. "So, they've just proven Malfoy innocent after all."

That sobered Fred and James up.

"Yeah, what're they going to do now?" Fred asked. "They're only lead was a dead-end."

"Look for a new lead," Teddy offered.

"Or they could just leave it to the teachers," Rose put in half-heartedly.

"Good luck with that," James snorted.

"I reckon you'd have to pin 'em down," Fred said.

"So who wants to read next?" Rose asked.

**Chapter 14-The Very Secret Diary**

Hugo had just opened his mouth to claim the next chapter when the high-pitched piercing whistle that was their alarm went off again.

"Bloody Hell!" a girl's voice cried from around the corner of the shed.

"Dom? Is that you?" Teddy called, leaning back to see around the corner as Rose hurriedly snatched the book up and stuffed it in her bag.

"I can't hear you, I think my eardrums have ruptured," Dominique complained, hands pressed over her ears.

Teddy hastily waved his wand and the whistling stopped. "Sorry about that. Just security."

Dominique dropped her hands and slumped against the side of the shed. "What are you doing back there, plotting to break into Gringotts?"

"Damn, who told her?" Fred exclaimed.

"If I come back there, am I going to see anything illegal?" Dominique asked cautiously.

"Of course not," James assured her. "We've got it all hidden away by now."

"You better be telling the truth, James Potter, because I don't want to be arrested as an accomplice."

A moment later Dominique strolled around the corner, Weasley-red hair glowing in the afternoon sun and her brother, Louis, a step behind her. She surveyed the eight of them sitting in the empty clearing, looking up at her innocently.

"It must be worse than I thought," she sighed, pretending to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"What's up?" Teddy asked the pair of them.

"Well, we _were _coming to tell you we're all going into the village to get ice cream," Dominique informed them, rubbing her ears, "but after you nearly made us go _deaf_, I'm not sure we're still extending the offer."

"Ice cream?" James asked, perking up. "Can we go, Teddy?"

"What're you asking me for? I'm not your babysitter," Teddy said, laughing a little at how much James resembled his three-year-old self, bouncing up and down for sugar.

"Well, you're the time-keeper," James shrugged, scrambling to his feet. "Race you to the village! Last one there's got to get that nasty bubblegum sherbet!"

Fred, Hugo, and Lily all jumped to their feet and sprinted off after James, the four of them shrieking and yelling as they attempted to overtake one another or push each other into the pond. The others got up more slowly to follow.

"Okay, I know you won't tell me, and I probably don't want to know, but what exactly are you lot up to back here?" Dominique questioned curiously as she fell into step beside Teddy.

"I bet Lucy three chocolate frog cards that it had to do with pranks," Louis said.

"Sorry mate, but I think Lu'll be nicking your Aggrippa," Teddy told him.

"It's not pranks?" Louis asked, silently wishing he'd bet Lucy gobstones instead. It had taken him three years to get Aggrippa.

"Do you really think I'd be in on such barbaric behavior," Teddy asked, grinning at him.

"Well, after Vic's eleventh birthday party…"

Half an hour later, the entire mob of Weasley cousins, minus Victoire and plus Scorpius and Teddy, were lounging under bright red umbrellas outside of the ice cream parlor in Ottery St. Catchpole, filling up all of the little tables the shop had as they finished the last of their various ice cream treats. Lily was still soaked from her plunge into the muddy pond, but to her satisfaction, James was, too, thanks to her. Hugo was stirring his melted cup of bubblegum sherbet a little glumly, so Rose, taking pity on him, offered him the rest of her sundae.

When she got up to rinse the sticky Carmel and chocolate sauce off her hands with water from the fountain, Scorpius followed her.

"Hey," he said, leaning against the sun-heated brick building and watching her fill her plastic water cup.

"Hey," she repeated, raising her eyebrows at him.

"Look," Scorpius shifted his footing and looked down at his own sticky fingers. "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry."

"For what?" Rose asked, looking puzzled.

"For – for what my dad said about your mum," Scorpius mumbled. "It was way out of line, even if she wasn't there to hear it."

Rose sighed exasperatedly and moved to stand directly in front of her friend, planting her hands on her hips and looking remarkably like her grandmother.

"Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy," she began in a voice that made his head jerk up to look at her. "If I ever catch you feeling guilty about things you had _no control over, _you will be very sorry indeed. Do you understand?"

Scorpius quailed under her intense gaze. "Yes ma'am," he mumbled.

Rose dropped her hands. "Good. And don't ever call me ma'am again either. It's weird."

Scorpius's lips twitched.

"It's just, I can't even imagine how _my _dad could think something like that. And about _your _mum, too, and your parents still let you hang out with me."

"Scorp, this was a long time ago," Rose said quietly so that none of her cousins would hear. "Our parents… they've been through a lot. I mean, just from what we've read about, they wrote the book on finding ways around the rules. I'm pretty sure they know they can't really stop us. They're not the ones who pick my friends, or your friends. And they know things can change."

"Yeah, everyone keeps saying that. I just wish we knew what _did _change," Scorpius sighed.

"Well, we'll just have to keep reading, won't we?" Rose murmured as they set off back towards the table.

"Can I read?" Hugo asked when they had managed to extract themselves unobtrusively from the rest and gathered once more behind the shed.

Rose pulled the book out of her bag and handed it to her brother, flopping back into the shade of the trees to escape the blazing sun.

Hugo set the book in front of him, wriggled backwards on his stomach so that he was out of the glaring heat too, and started to read.

**Chapter thirteen The Very Secret Diary**

"Oooo, sounds promising," James said, rubbing his hands together.

"Wonder why it's _very _secret," Lily mused.

"Maybe it's the heir of Slytherin's" Rose suggested.

"That would be a logical guess," Albus said, comprehension dawning.

"Wanna bet on that, Rosie?" Fred asked.

She looked at him appraisingly. "Bet what?"

Fred thought about it for a moment. "How 'bout captaincy of our next Quidditch match."

The two captain positions for a Weasley family game were highly desired and competed-over positions. And Rose, Fred, and James had the most heated competition of all their cousins.

"Alright," Rose agreed, fairly confident that the diary would turn out to be connected to the heir somehow. "Who's do you think it is, then?"

Fred grinned. "My bet is Aunt Ginny's."

"What?" James asked, looking sharply at his cousin. "What makes you think Mum's got anything to do with this?"

"Nothing. But it said earlier that she had a diary, remember? We all thought it was weird 'cause your mum's not the diary type," he grinned wickedly. "Just imagine what kind of things she must've written about your dad in there. Probably sappy poems and pages covered in 'Mrs. Ginny Potter', stuff she'd want to keep secret for sure."

James looked torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to defend his mother.

"Okay, so if it's Ginny's diary, you get to be captain, and if it's the heir of Slytherin's I get to be captain," Rose said to Fred.

"Yup," Fred agreed, extending a hand to Rose to seal the deal.

"And if neither of you are right, I get to be captain," James added.

Fred and Rose both just rolled their eyes.

"Can I keep reading now?" Hugo asked impatiently, and, without waiting for an answer, did just that.

**Hermione remained in the hospital wing for several weeks.**

"It took that long to cure her?" Hugo asked incredulously, interrupting himself.

"Well, yeah, I'd imagine," Teddy said. "Especially since they couldn't tell Madam Pomfrey what exactly was wrong with her without getting suspended. That's a complicated potion."

"I guess," Hugo said, but it still sounded like an awfully long time to him. His mother had fixed the purple stripes Rose had accidentally covered him with when they were little in a second.

**There was a flurry of rumor about her disappearance when the rest of the school arrived back from their Christmas holidays, because of course everyone thought that she had been attacked.**

"Oh, yeah, I bet," Rose murmured, shuddering at the idea.

**So many students filed past the hospital wing trying to catch a glimpse of her that Madam Pomfrey took out her curtains again and placed them around Hermione's bed, to spare her the shame of being seen with a furry face.**

"That would be awful," Lily said sympathetically.

"You know, it really sucks that this happened to her," Albus said. "I mean, she's the one who did all the work and made the potion right and orchestrated the rest of that scheme. It was just a stupid little mistake and now she's part cat."

"I dunno," Rose said thoughtfully. "I mean, yeah, it does seem unfair that she went through all that work to get this, but I think Mum'd rather it happened to her than one of the boys. She'd be so guilty if it was her fault one of them got stuck in the hospital wing."

"Well, either way, it sucks for her."

James shrugged. "You can't try to pull something that big off and not have consequences. It's like one of the karmic rules of the universe."

**Harry and Ron went to visit her every evening. When the new term started, they brought her each day's homework.**

"Bet that cheered her up," James said sarcastically. Then after thinking about it, "Actually, it probably really did."

"Well, she doesn't want to fall behind," Rose defended.

"**If I'd sprouted whiskers, I'd take a break from work," said Ron, tipping a stack of books onto Hermione's bedside table one evening.**

"Most normal people would," Fred agreed fervently.

"Most lazy people, you mean," Rose corrected.

"**Don't be silly, Ron, I've got to keep up," said Hermione briskly. Her spirits were greatly improved by the fact that all the hair hadgone from her face and her eyes were turning slowly back to brown.**

"Always something to celebrate," James snickered.

Rose flashed him an annoyed look.

"He's only jealous that he still _can't _grow hair on his face," Teddy said slyly and was forced to duck James's retaliatory acorn.

"**I don't suppose you've got any new leads?" she added in a whisper, so that Madam Pomfrey couldn't hear her.**

"**Nothing," said Harry gloomily.**

There was a sigh of disappointment.

"**I was so **_**sure **_**it was Malfoy," said Ron, for about the hundredth time.**

"**What's that?" asked Harry, pointing to something gold sticking out from under Hermione's pillow.**

"**Just a get well card," said Hermione hastily, trying to poke it out of sight,**

"Anyone else get the feeling she's hiding something?" James asked waggling his eyebrows.

**but Ron was too quick for her. He pulled it out, flicked it open, and read aloud:**

"_**To Miss Granger, wishing you a speedy recovery, from your concernedteacher, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, ThirdClass, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and fivetimewinner of **_**Witch Weekly's **_**Most-Charming-Smile Award.**_**"**

Fred and James were both making gaging noises at this point. Rose shook her head in bewilderment that her mother could ever have _liked _this man. Teddy rolled his eyes at the signature.

"I'll bet he only sent that card as an excuse to sign something and show off every award he ever got," he said in a bored voice.

**Ron looked up at Hermione, disgusted.**

"Us too," Fred assured the book.

"**You sleep with this under your **_**pillow**_**?"**

Hugo paused to heave an impatient sigh.

"Rose, if you ever get loopy over a guy like this, do I have permission to hold your bookshelf hostage until you come to your senses?" he asked his sister.

"Absolutely," Rose answered at once.

**But Hermione was spared answering by Madam Pomfrey sweeping over with her evening dose of medicine.**

"**Is Lockhart the smarmiest bloke you've ever met, or what?"**

"Understatement of the century," Fred exclaimed, flopping backward on the grass.

**Ron said to Harry as they left the infirmary and started up the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower. Snape had given them so much homework, Harry thought he was likely to be in the sixth year before he finished it. Ron was just saying he wished he had asked Hermione how many rat tails you were supposed to add to a Hair-Raising Potion when an angry outburst from the floor above reached their ears.**

"What's that about?" Lily asked apprehensively.

"I dunno, but I reckon we're going to find out," Teddy said with a slight smile. Curiosity seemed to rule Harry, Ron, and Hermione's lives.

"**That's Filch," Harry muttered as they hurried up the stairs and paused, out of sight, listening hard.**

"Probably just mud or something then," James said in disappointment. "Filch is always mad about something."

"**You don't think someone else's been attacked?" said Ron tensely.**

The group tensed.

"I doubt it," Teddy said reassuringly. "If it was another attack, there'd be more fear than anger, I reckon."

At least he very much hoped that was the case. Every new attack put him even more on-edge in this book. Knowing Harry's luck, his godfather probably came face-to-face with monster at some point during the year, and Teddy was beginning to dread hearing about that.

**They stood still, their heads inclined toward Filch's voice, which sounded quite hysterical.**

"— _**even more work for me! Mopping all night, like I haven't got enough to do! No, this is the final straw, I'm going to Dumbledore **_**—"**

"See? It's not a lead, just Filch having a tantrum," James said as the rest relaxed.

"I don't know about that. It'll probably lead to something if it's important enough to be in the book," Teddy countered.

James shrugged and Hugo kept reading, curious to know what the next mystery would be.

**His footsteps receded along the out-of-sight corridor and they heard a distant door slam.**

**They poked their heads around the corner. Filch had clearly been manning his usual lookout post: They were once again on the spot where Mrs. Norris had been attacked. **

Teddy gave them a significant look.

**They saw at a glance what Filch had been shouting about. A great flood of water stretched over half the corridor, and it looked as though it was still seeping from under the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. **

"She must be upset over something again," Rose sighed.

**Now that Filch had stopped shouting, they could hear Myrtle's wails echoing off the bathroom walls.**

"_**Now **_**what's up with her?" said Ron.**

"I reckon a spider looking at her the wrong way could do it," James muttered under his breath.

"**Let's go and see," said Harry, and holding their robes over their ankles they stepped through the great wash of water to the door bearing its out of order sign, ignored it as always, and entered.**

**Moaning Myrtle was crying, if possible, louder and harder than ever before. She seemed to be hiding down her usual toilet. It was dark in the bathroom because the candles had been extinguished in the great rush of water that had left both walls and floor soaking wet.**

"You know, I just thought of something," James said suddenly.

"Historic moment, this is," Albus couldn't help but smirk.

James elbowed him hard in the stomach.

"No, listen. Ghosts aren't solid, right?"

"No, James, they are not," Rose said very slowly, as if she were talking to a two-year-old.

"So they just go right through everything, don't they? I mean, we walk right through them."

"Yes, generally that's how it works when you have no substantial matter."

"So how come she can flood the bathroom?"

Rose had opened her mouth with an exasperated air, but was apparently caught off-guard by the legitimist question, something she had not noticed herself. The rest looked around, curious about this fact as well.

"Ghosts can't actually touch things, but they can manipulate physical objects if they have enough emotional energy," Teddy supplied.

"Well, she's sure got plenty of emotion," Fred muttered.

"Exactly," Teddy nodded. But another curiosity had struck him. How had Myrtle died in the first place? She must have been only a student. Had it been in that very bathroom? Judging by her dramatics, he guessed her death had been very traumatic. He knew, of course, that Hogwarts had seen scores of death. His own parents had lost their lives somewhere within the boundaries of the school (he pushed this thought away quickly, lest it threaten to engulf him), but the idea of this girl's death sent a shiver up his spine. Whatever the circumstances surrounding it, he got the feeling there hadn't even been the excuse of a war, and somehow that made it worse.

"**What's up, Myrtle?" said Harry.**

"**Who's that?" glugged Myrtle miserably. "Come to throw something else at me?"**

**Harry waded across to her stall and said, "Why would I throw something at you?"**

"The real question is why _wouldn't _you?" Fred sniggered.

"Be nice," Rose chided.

"**Don't ask me," Myrtle shouted, emerging with a wave of yet more water, which splashed onto the already sopping floor. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it's funny to throw a book at me. . . ."**

"The diary!" James said suddenly.

"Why would Ginny through her diary at Moaning Myrtle?" Rose asked, raising an eyebrow at Fred.

"Why would the heir of Slytherin leave it lying around?" Fred shot back.

"Er… maybe it's not the diary," James said uncertainly.

"**But it can't hurt you if someone throws something at you," said Harry, reasonably. "I mean, it'd just go right through you, wouldn't it?"**

"Harry," Rose sighed, shaking her head in disappointment. "I thought you had more tact than that…."

"Well, he has a point," Fred pointed out, shrugging.

"Yes, but you don't say something like that to a girl who's died!" Rose said exasperatedly, giving a Fred a look as though he should know the etiquette of conversation with people who had died.

**He had said the wrong thing. **

"Obviously," Lily muttered.

**Myrtle puffed herself up and shrieked, "Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because **_**she **_**can't feel it! Ten points if you can get it through her stomach! Fifty points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, **

Fred and James exchanged evil smirks.

"No," Rose said before they could even speak the idea aloud. "You are not going around throwing books at a poor ghost. And you are absolutely not using my books as ammo!"

"Oh, come on Rosie," Fred complained.

**I **_**don't**_** think!"**

"**Who threw it at you, anyway?" asked Harry.**

Teddy frowned, leaning closer to the book. Who _had _thrown the diary – if that was what it was. Because Rose and Fred made good points. It didn't make sense for the heir of Slytherin (or Ginny, though he highly doubted the diary belonged to her) to go throwing their diary all over the place.

"_**I **_**don't know. . . . I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head," said Myrtle, glaring at them. "It's over there, it got washed out. . . ."**

**Harry and Ron looked under the sink where Myrtle was pointing. A small, thin book lay there. It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom. Harry stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold him back.**

"**What?" said Harry.**

"**Are you crazy?" said Ron. "It could be dangerous."**

"Finally!" Fred exploded. "_Someone _gets what I've been trying to tell everybody for years! Books are dangerous! Don't go near them!"

Hugo quickly read on when he caught the look on his sister's face.

"_**Dangerous**_**?" said Harry, laughing. "Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"**

"You'd be surprised," Fred said darkly.

"**You'd be surprised," said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. **

"See? Uncle Ron agrees with me!"

"**Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated — Dad's told me — there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read **_**Sonnets of a Sorcerer **_**spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could **_**never stop reading**_**! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And —"**

"**All right, I've got the point," said Harry.**

Fred blinked. He'd only been joking. At least he had a good reason to stay away from the library, now.

**The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.**

"**Well, we won't find out unless we look at it," he said, **

"That's practically his motto," Teddy muttered, remembering some of the training sessions Harry had headed.

**and he ducked around Ron and picked it up off the floor.**

**Harry saw at once that it was a diary, **

"Ha! Knew it," James said triumphantly.

Teddy's frown deepened. What was going on?

**and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old. **

"Told you!" Rose said smugly to Fred.

"What?" he said blankly as Albus and Scorpius exchanged looks and Teddy bit his lip.

Rose heaved an impatient sigh. "The diary's got to be the heir of Slythern's if it's fifty years old."

"Why?"

"Because the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years before!"

"Yeah, but the heir wasn't the only one who had a diary fifty years ago. It doesn't mean it's theirs. Loads of Aunt Ginny's things are second-hand. It could still be hers."

Fred crossed his arms stubbornly, unwilling to give up on his bet until he was absolutely proved wrong beyond a doubt.

**He opened it eagerly. On the first page he could just make out the name**

Everybody held their breath, even Fred who was still hoping it belonged to his aunt (though he knew it probably didn't). Teddy leaned forward unconsciously.

"**T. M. Riddle" in smudged ink.**

Hugo slowly lay the book down and looked up at the frozen group around him.

"Riddle?" he asked in a squeak. "L-like _Tom _Riddle?"

Teddy gave a slight nod, but other than that, no one moved a muscle. They barely breathed. They all knew that name. They all knew, had read it or heard it so many times before, how Harry had called Voldemort by his real name in the final stand-off: Tom Riddle. Everybody knew, now, what Voldemort's real name had been; just one more way to tear down his mask of fear.

Rose licked her lips and whispered, "So it was all him? Again?"

"It always is," Teddy said bitterly. There was hardly a tragedy close to him that could not be traced to Voldemort.

"But… how?" Albus asked, shivering. He knew it shouldn't scare him as much as it did, that this was connected to Voldemort, too. He had somehow known it would always come back to this in the back of his mind. But it still made his stomach churn. The carnage and destruction Voldemort had inflicted on the world… and that was just what he'd heard about. The last book had been bad enough.

"I have no idea," Teddy said very quietly, and Albus thought he could see a similar fear in his surrogate brother's eyes. It made his own nerves jump worse.

"It's just his diary," Scorpius said shakily. "I mean… maybe it's not _really _him. That Dobby thing – elf – " he hastened to amend as Rose's eyes flashed in his direction. "The elf, Harry asked him if it had to do with Voldemort, and he said no. That diary, it could just be instructions."

He wasn't sure how that made it any better, really. But the idea that it was just a misguided student rather than the shadow that seemed to lurk in the back of this entire story was somehow comforting.

"I guess you get to be captain," Fred said weakly to Rose after a moment of heavy silence.

Rose looked miserable about her triumph.

"Should I keep going?" Hugo said uncertainly.

The others nodded and so he returned to the book.

"**Hang on," said Ron, who had approached cautiously and was looking over Harry's shoulder. "I know that name. . . .**

"Of course you do," Rose murmured, unable to muster any real exasperation. "It's only the name of the most heinous killer in a century."

**T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago."**

"What?" several people burst out.

"How did he not recognize that name?" Rose asked incredulously.

"How did Voldemort get an award for special services to the school?" James demanded.

Teddy only shook his head, mind still reeling from the revelation of exactly what they were dealing with here. This was almost war-scale.

"People didn't use to know that was his name," Albus murmured quietly to Rose. "Dad told me it wasn't until after the second war – after he used it in the end – that people connected that name with Voldemort."

"**How on earth d'you know that?" said Harry in amazement.**

"**Because Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in detention," said Ron resentfully. **

"Why do they still have that in the Trophy room?" James asked with a mixture of anger and revulsion. "Surely Dumbledore would have known who T.M. Riddle was!"

No one knew.

"**That was the one I burped slugs all over. **

"Should have just left it covered in slugs," Fred muttered, even though he knew it was a childish and stupid thing to say. He would rather like to chuck the thing as hard as he could off the astronomy tower into a bonfire, but the slugs was the best he could do at the moment.

**If you'd wiped slime off a name for an hour, you'd remember it, too."**

**Harry peeled the wet pages apart. They were completely blank.**

A stab of curiosity penetrated Teddy's brain and, with an effort, he pulled himself back into 'Auror mode'. The pages were blank? So how could the book give directions on opening the chamber of secrets? The others looked stumped by this fact, too.

**There wasn't the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even **_**Auntie Mabel's birthday, **_**or **_**dentist, half-past three.**_

"I don't think Voldemort keeps track of things like that," Albus mumbled.

"That would explain his teeth," Fred said dully.

"**He never wrote in it," said Harry, disappointed.**

"**I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?" said Ron curiously.**

"I don't know, but I don't like it," Lily said, shuffling closer to Teddy, despite the scorching summer afternoon. A cold, creepy feeling was tingling over her skin, like spiders were crawling over her. Teddy absently ran a hand over her bright hair to try to calm her down.

**Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London. **

"**He must've been Muggle-born," said Harry thoughtfully. "To have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road. . . ."**

"That's odd," Teddy said quietly. "You wouldn't expect him to do his shopping in Muggle stores."

"**Well, it's not much use to you," said Ron. He dropped his voice. "Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle's nose."**

Suddenly the tension was cut. James and Fred snorted and the others couldn't help but crack a smile, even Rose, who disapproved of teasing Myrtle like that.

**Harry, however, pocketed it.**

"Of course," said Teddy with a mixture of slight amusement and pride. His godfather wouldn't be his godfather if he dismissed something like that just for being blank.

**Hermione left the hospital wing, de-whiskered, tail-less, and furfree, at the beginning of February. **

"Over a month?" Hugo asked disbelievingly. "She was there for more than a month?"

"Like I said, it's a tricky potion, especially when you don't know what potion you're dealing with," Teddy shrugged.

Hugo kept reading, but it seemed like a terribly long time to be stuck in the hospital wing.

**On her first evening back in Gryffindor Tower, Harry showed her T. M. Riddle's diary and told her the story of how they had found it.**

"**Oooh, it might have hidden powers," said Hermione enthusiastically, taking the diary and looking at it closely.**

"I doubt they're the sort of powers you want to discover," Teddy said darkly.

Beside him, Lily shivered.

"**If it has, it's hiding them very well," said Ron. "Maybe it's shy.**

Fred and James laughed this time and the others had to smile again.

**I don't know why you don't chuck it, Harry."**

"**I wish I knew why someone **_**did **_**try to chuck it," said Harry. **

"And that's why he's keeping it," Teddy said wisely. "Because someone tried to get rid of it for a reason. That's what makes Harry so good, even when he was twelve."

"**I wouldn't mind knowing how Riddle got an award for special services to Hogwarts either."**

"I think we'd all like to know that," Albus muttered.

"**Could've been anything," said Ron. "Maybe he got thirty O.W.L.s or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would've done everyone a favor. . . ."**

Dark looks crossed many of their faces. That last thing wasn't so far out of the realm of possibilities for Voldemort.

**But Harry could tell from the arrested look on Hermione's face that she was thinking what he was thinking.**

"They do that a lot," Teddy mumbled to himself. It was part of that silent communication thing the three of them had down so well.

"**What?" said Ron, looking from one to the other.**

"**Well, the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years ago, wasn't it?" he said. "That's what Malfoy said."**

"**Yeah . . ." said Ron slowly.**

"Come on, Dad," Rose said impatiently. "Put it together!"

"**And **_**this diary **_**is fifty years old," said Hermione, tapping it excitedly. **

"**So?"**

Rose rolled her eyes.

"**Oh, Ron, wake up," snapped Hermione. "We know the person who opened the Chamber last time was expelled **_**fifty years ago. **_**We know T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school **_**fifty years ago. **_**Well, what if Riddle got his special award for **_**catchingthe Heir of Slytherin**_**? **

"More like framing him," Fred muttered darkly. There was no way Voldemort _wasn't _the heir of Slytherin.

**His diary would probably tell us everything — where the Chamber is, and how to open it, and what sort of creature lives in it — the person who's behind the attacks this time wouldn't want that lying around, would they?"**

"No…" Teddy said slowly. There was something that didn't add up here. He felt like the answer was dangling in the air in front of him, but he just couldn't grab it.

"**That's a **_**brilliant **_**theory, Hermione," said Ron, "with just one tiny little flaw. **_**There's nothing written in his diary.**_**"**

"Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there," Rose whispered.

**But Hermione was pulling her wand out of her bag.**

"**It might be invisible ink!" she whispered.**

**She tapped the diary three times and said, "**_**Aparecium**_**!"**

**Nothing happened. **

There were some disappointed sighs. They were all eager for another lead. At least then it felt like they were getting closer to ending all of this.

**Undaunted, Hermione shoved her hand back into her bag and pulled out what appeared to be a bright red eraser.**

"**It's a Revealer, I got it in Diagon Alley," she said.**

"I have one of those," Hugo said randomly.

**She rubbed hard on **_**January first. **_**Nothing happened.**

"What's up with this book?" James asked in frustration.

"Whatever it is, it sure isn't kid stuff," Teddy said uneasily.

"**I'm telling you, there's nothing to find in there," said Ron. "Riddle just got a diary for Christmas and couldn't be bothered filling it in."**

**Harry couldn't explain, even to himself, why he didn't just throw Riddle's diary away. The fact was that even though he **_**knew **_**the diary was blank, he kept absentmindedly picking it up and turning the pages, as though it were a story he wanted to finish. **

Teddy bit his lip, remembering what Ron had said about cursed books. The diary's innocent appearance made him even more wary of it. It was like a sleeping snake waiting to strike. And Harry was the one in striking distance without a clue what he was dealing with. He thought T.M. Riddle was the good guy here. The idea made Teddy shudder.

**And while Harry was sure he had never heard the name T. M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he'd had when he was very small, and had half-forgotten.**

"Definitely not," James said, shaking his head violently.

"Why's he think the name sounds familiar?" Lily whispered.

"I dunno. But I guess their destinies are just so intertwined…" Teddy trailed off.

**But this was absurd. He'd never had friends before Hogwarts, Dudley had made sure of that.**

And this added a fresh pang of pity to add to the escalating unease in the group.

**Nevertheless, Harry was determined to find out more about Riddle, so next day at break, he headed for the trophy room to examine Riddle's special award, accompanied by an interested Hermione and a thoroughly unconvinced Ron, who told them he'd seen enough of the trophy room to last him a lifetime.**

**Riddle's burnished gold shield was tucked away in a corner cabinet. It didn't carry details of why it had been given to him ("Good thing, too, or it'd be even bigger and I'd still be polishing it," said Ron). However, they did find Riddle's name on an old Medal for Magical Merit, and on a list of old Head Boys.**

"He was head boy?" Rose asked, surprised. It seemed like Tom Riddle had been… well, the sort of student she was. It made her insides crawl. It was far easier to imagine him – if she had to imagine him before he became Voldemort – as a creepy, friendless monster everyone was just waiting to turn evil.

"It's usually not as cut-and-dry as we'd like it to be," said Teddy as though reading her thoughts.

"**He sounds like Percy," said Ron, wrinkling his nose in disgust.**

"Not at all," Fred said vehemently.

"**Prefect, Head Boy . . . probably top of every class —"**

"**You say that like it's a bad thing," said Hermione in a slightly hurt voice.**

There were some quiet chuckles, easing the heavy mood that seemed hard to shake since starting this book.

**The sun had now begun to shine weakly on Hogwarts again. Inside the castle, the mood had grown more hopeful. There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.**

"Well that's good," Lily said with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"**The moment their acne clears up, they'll be ready for repotting again," Harry heard her telling Filch kindly one afternoon. "And after that, it won't be long until we're cutting them up and stewing them. You'll have Mrs. Norris back in no time."**

"Maybe the teachers'll fix this mess after all," Hugo said, looking up.

"Maybe," Albus said skeptically.

"But I wouldn't count on it," Teddy sighed. "Harry's the one with Voldemort's diary. All the staff has got is an antidote."

**Perhaps the Heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. **

"If only we were that lucky," Albus muttered.

Rose was gripped by a sudden cold dread. The longer whoever was opening the Chamber waited, bided their time, the worse she feared the next attack would be. And she was certain, somehow, that there would be another attack. She had a bad feeling about what the heir would do next. The other attacks were bad enough….

**It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years. . . .**

**Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff didn't take this cheerful view. He was still convinced that Harry was the guilty one, **

"Well, he's an idiot!' Lily said acidly, pushing her up straight, sudden anger flashing in her eyes.

**that he had "given himself away" at the Dueling Club. Peeves wasn't helping matters; he kept popping up in the crowded corridors singing "Oh, Potter, you rotter . . ." now with a dance routine to match.**

James looked mad about this and Fred shrugged at him. He'd said it before; Peeves didn't care as long as there was chaos. But he did feel bad for how this particular antic was affecting his uncle. Harry didn't deserve the whole school thinking he was attacking kids.

**Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop.**

There was a wave of groans, face-palms, and eye-rolls, but no one was very surprised to hear this by now.

**Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Gryffindors were lining up for Transfiguration.**

"**I don't think there'll be any more trouble, Minerva," he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. "I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him.**

"**You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won't say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing. . . ."**

**He tapped his nose again and strode off.**

"Why do I get a bad feeling about this?" James asked apprehensively.

**Lockhart's idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February fourteenth. **

"Oh no," Fred moaned in a tone that suggested doomsday had arrived.

Beside him, James was looking horrified to hear what was coming next.

**Harry hadn't had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall, slightly late. He thought, for a moment, that he'd walked through the wrong doors.**

**The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers.**

Fred and James began to make choking noises.

**Worse still, heart-shaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling.**

"The gaudy love… it's smothering me!" Fred gaged, throwing his hands up to shield his face.

James had flopped backward on the grass with his tongue lolling out.

**Harry went over to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was sitting looking sickened, **

"Us too," Albus muttered, sharing a fervent glance with Scorpius. He shuddered at the thought of that happening while _he _was at Hogwarts. But beside him Rose was fighting back a giggle as she imagined the same thing.

**and Hermione seemed to have been overcome with giggles.**

"Mum," Hugo said in disappointment. "Quit being so _girly_."

Teddy was fighting back a laugh at the image of what Ron (looking sickened) and Hermione (giggling) must have looked like sitting together in the middle of the Valentines décor. Probably a lot like they'd looked at the rehearsal dinner for their wedding.

"**What's going on?" Harry asked them, sitting down and wiping confetti off his bacon.**

**Ron pointed to the teachers' table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle going in Professor McGonagall's cheek. **

"Oh, I bet McGonagall loved that," James laughed.

"What? She doesn't strike you as the frilly, heart-shaped confetti type?" Fred asked innocently.

**Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.**

Fred and James weren't the only ones who cracked up at this image.

"**Happy Valentine's Day!" Lockhart shouted. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all — and it doesn't end here!"**

"Oh no!" James moaned dramatically.

"We can't take any more! Please!" Fred begged.

**Lockhart clapped his hands and through the doors to the entrance hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. **

Teddy raised an eyebrow. Fred and James exchanged curious looks, not sure how this fit in with lurid pink flowers.

**Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.**

Fred and James burst out laughing so hard that a bird shot into the air form the tree behind them in alarm. Rose tried to scowl at them, but she couldn't through her own grin.

"Wonder how much he had to pay and threaten them to do that," Scorpius said, grinning too.

"**My friendly, card-carrying cupids!" beamed Lockhart. "They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines!**

"My bet is a lot," Teddy told Scorpius over Fred and James's high-pitched 'Ooooo's, amusement coloring his voice.

**And the fun doesn't stop here! **

"Not even there?" Fred asked, breathless from laughing.

**I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion!**

"Yes, why not?" James asked, howling with laughter. "Who wants to survive this day anyway?"

**And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"**

"What?" Rose asked, giggling. "Is that true?"

"I don't think I really want to know," Teddy said.

**Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.**

"**Please, Hermione, tell me you weren't one of the forty-six," said Ron as they left the Great Hall for their first lesson. **

"Please?" Hugo begged, closing his eyes tight before reading the next line. Rose crossed her fingers behind her back.

**Hermione suddenly became very interested in searching her bag for her schedule and didn't answer.**

Rose shook her head and Hugo groaned. The others snickered.

**All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.**

Teddy grinned as Fred and James made kissing noises and the others snickered some more at their uncle's misfortune. He'd love to have seen Harry's face when he realized he was getting a valentine.

"**Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!" shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.**

**Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley,**

"Who wants to bet Mum's the one who sent it?" James asked breathlessly as the others laughed outright, thoroughly enjoying the suddenly lightened atmosphere.

**Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people's shins, **

"Very in the spirit of Valentine's day," Teddy smirked.

"It is in my experience," Fred muttered.

"Maybe you shouldn't dare Aaron to try and kiss Sandy Lewis next year then," James sniggered.

**and reached him before he'd gone two paces.**

"**I've got a musical message to deliver to 'Arry Potter in person," he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.**

"I wouldn't mess with him, Dad," James snickered. "Better just let him deliver that musical message." James dissolved into a fit of laughter on the last two words.

"_**Not here,**_**" Harry hissed, trying to escape.**

"**Stay **_**still **_**!" grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry's bag and pulling him back.**

"**Let me go!" Harry snarled, tugging.**

"Come on, take it like a man," Teddy laughed.

**With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two. His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor and his ink bottle smashed over everything.**

"Oooo, probably would have just been easier to be humiliated in front of first years," Albus said.

"Probably will be anyway," Fred grinned. "That dwarf's delivering his message or else," he pretended to twang an invisible harp threateningly.

**Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a holdup in the corridor. **

"**What's going on here?" came the cold, drawling voice of Draco Malfoy. **

"Perfect," Albus groaned, feeling bad for his father, although still amused by the situation.

**Harry started stuffing everything feverishly into his ripped bag, desperate to get away before Malfoy could hear his musical valentine.**

"**What's all this commotion?" said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.**

**Losing his head, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees and brought him crashing to the floor.**

"Tough luck, mate," Teddy grinned.

"**Right," he said, sitting on Harry's ankles. "Here is your singing valentine:**

_**His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,**_

_**His hair is as dark as a blackboard.**_

_**I wish he was mine, he's really divine,**_

_**The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.**_**"**

James had tears of laughter in his eyes at the end of this. No one else had been able to refrain from cracking up either, not even Scorpius, who still didn't feel very comfortable laughing at Harry Potter.

"Whoever wrote that was a genius!" Fred gasped.

Lily suddenly burst out into peals of fresh giggles.

"What's with you, Lily-bud?" Teddy asked amusedly.

"Daddy's card from this year," Lily said, still laughing. "I just thought he was a horrid poet, but this is where it came from!"

"What d'you mean?" James asked, feeling that he was missing out on something highly amusing as he watched his sister turn red from laughing.

Fighting to keep a straight face, Lily cleared her throat and recited:

"Her eyes are as brown as a chocolate frog creation

Her hair is as bright as a carnation

I'm so glad that she's mine

She's really divine

The first Weasley girl in seven generations.

"And he signed it," Lily said above the laughter bubbling out from behind their shed, "with 'Sorry I couldn't get a threatening dwarf to chase you down to deliver this musically'. I just thought he was being weird, but it all makes sense now!"

It took a few minutes before Hugo could make himself heard over his cousins' amusement.

**Harry would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth.**

James was still whipping tears of mirth off his cheeks. ("And to think she got a writing career after that…")

"**Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now," he said, shooing some of the younger students away. "**_**And **_**you, Malfoy —"**

**Harry, glancing over, saw Malfoy stoop and snatch up something. Leering, he showed it to Crabbe and Goyle, **

"That doesn't sound good," James muttered, sobering at last.

**and Harry realized that he'd got Riddle's diary.**

"**Give that back," said Harry quietly.**

"**Wonder what Potter's written in this?" said Malfoy, who obviously hadn't noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry's own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.**

"Why?" Albus wondered, but Hugo kept reading before anyone could ponder Ginny's reaction.

"**Hand it over, Malfoy," said Percy sternly.**

"**When I've had a look," said Malfoy, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry.**

**Percy said, "As a school prefect —" but Harry had lost his temper. He pulled out his wand and shouted, "**_**Expelliarmus**_**!" and just as Snape had disarmed Lockhart, so Malfoy found the diary shooting out of his hand into the air. **

"Nice one," James said approvingly.

"And that's how he saved the world, too," Fred pointed out. "So if you missed this one, there'll be another big show that's almost as cool as showing up Malfoy later."

**Ron, grinning broadly, caught it.**

"**Harry!" said Percy loudly. "No magic in the corridors. I'll have to report this, you know!"**

**But Harry didn't care, he was one-up on Malfoy, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day. Malfoy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed him to enter her classroom, he yelled spitefully after her, "I don't think Potter liked your valentine much!"**

**Ginny covered her face with her hands and ran into class.**

"Git!" James growled as Lily crossed her arms angrily and Albus and Hugo scowled.

**Snarling, Ron pulled out his wand, too, **

"Show him, Dad," Hugo said, even though he'd already seen the 'but' that meant his dad hadn't been able to stick up for his sister.

**but Harry pulled him away. Ron didn't need to spend the whole of Charms belching slugs.**

Hugo supposed that was a good point, but he still wished someone would hex that Malfoy prat for the things he said about Hugo's mother _and _his favorite aunt.

**It wasn't until they had reached Professor Flitwick's class that Harry noticed something rather odd about Riddle's diary. **

Teddy tensed. The thing was like a ticking time bomb. An earie sort of silent danger seemed to hang over it, maybe was already working on Harry, not letting him get rid of it. And suddenly Teddy wished Harry would chuck it, never mind what sort of clues it might hold.

**All his other books were drenched in scarlet ink. The diary, however, was as clean as it had been before the ink bottle had smashed all over it. **

"Well, that's weird, but not exactly sinister," Rose said slowly.

Teddy's apprehension did not dissipate.

**He tried to point this out to Ron, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end, and he wasn't much interested in anything else.**

**Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn't think he could stand Fred and George singing, "His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad" one more time, **

Fred and James got one last good snicker out of the valentine.

**and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle's diary again, and knew that Ron thought he was wasting his time.**

"I wish he wouldn't do that alone," Teddy said tensely. He was poking the snake.

**Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.**

**The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. **

Rose, Albus, and Scorpius exchanged looks. Teddy tried to tell himself he was being paranoid and that nothing was going to happen, but that diary just gave him a sick sort of feeling.

**Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, "My name is Harry Potter."**

**The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without trace. Then, at last, something happened.**

They all leaned unconsciously forward. Teddy held his breath.

**Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.**

"_**Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary**_**?"**

"Creepy," Fred said into the silence that followed this sentence.

"Don't tell him anything, Dad," James told the book.

"He doesn't know it's Voldemort – or some part of Voldemort," Teddy said miserably.

"You don't think it's the real, you know, _him_, do you?" Rose asked, that cold fear shooting through her again as she imagined the book sucking her unknowing uncle through a portal to Voldemort himself.

Teddy shook his head. He had no idea how this diary worked.

"But I don't think it was a good thing to lead off with the fact that he's Harry Potter," he muttered.

"Keep reading, Hue," Lily told her cousin tensely.

**These words, too, faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back.**

"**Someone tried to flush it down a toilet."**

**He waited eagerly for Riddle's reply.**

"_**Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.**_**"**

"Yeah, no kidding," James mumbled, wondering what the 'more lasting way than ink' was.

"Is it like the map?" Albus said suddenly.

"No!" James snapped at once, feeling offended.

"No, I mean, like Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, they sort of put a little of themselves into it, didn't they? Enough so that sometimes they can write to you, kind of like how the portraits talk to you. It's not really them, but it's something they might've said."

"Yeah, but you can't have conversations with the map," Teddy reminded Albus. He had tried it more than once after his friend had accidentally triggered the writing by 'threatening' to burn the map. But he only ever got jokes and snide remarks, and that was if he was lucky enough to get anything at all. Besides, he didn't like to compare the Marauders Map with Voldemort's diary. The diary had an evil air about it.

"**What do you mean?" Harry scrawled, blotting the page in his excitement.**

"_**I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.**_**"**

"You mean terrible things that _you_ did," Hugo couldn't help but mutter under his breath.

"**That's where I am now," Harry wrote quickly. **

"Don't _tell _him that, Dad!" James exclaimed.

"It's not like he wouldn't already know that," Fred pointed out.

"Yeah, but he still shouldn't go giving his location away to random diary strangers that could be psycho murderers," James said exasperatedly.

"You know, somewhere in there were good instincts," Teddy told James, thinking along the same lines.

James looked faintly pleased at the praise.

"**I'm at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff 's been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"**

**His heart was hammering. Riddle's reply came quickly, his writing becoming untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.**

"_**Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. **_

Lily squeaked and Rose clapped her hands to her mouth.

"It – it can kill?" Albus asked, white-faced.

"Apparently," Teddy said grimly.

"We already knew that, though," Fred reminded them. "When Malfoy said he hoped – you know – Aunt Hermione was next? He said a Muggle-born was killed the last time."

"I –" Rose had completely overlooked that scrap of information in the shock of what had been said after it.

"Yeah, you were focused on other things at the time," Fred said understandingly, waving his hand.

"Is someone going to die?" Lily asked, wide-eyed, thinking of Colin Creevey.

Teddy squeezed her shoulders, but he didn't know what to say to calm her down. He didn't want to lie to her.

_**I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. **_

"More like _framed _him," James said again. "Wonder who the poor scapegoat was."

_**But the headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident.**_

_Girl_? Teddy's thoughts flashed back to Moaning Myrtle. But she could have died at any point in the last thousand years, he reminded himself, refocusing on what Hugo was reading.

_**They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned.**_**"**

"No kidding," James said darkly, glaring at the book.

**Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in his hurry to write back.**

"**It's happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?"**

"_**I can show you, if you like**_**," came Riddle's reply. **

"Don't!" Rose couldn't stop herself form crying as Teddy went rigid.

"Don't trust him," Rose went on. "Why couldn't he just tell you, Harry? Think of that!"

"You know he can't hear you," Scorpius felt the need to mutter in Rose's ear because she was looking at the book as if it were her real twelve-year-old uncle about to dive off a cliff or something. "And you know he's fine now," he added when Rose didn't seem to hear him.

"Harry's got more sense than to trust some disembodied writer," Teddy said, remembering his godfather telling him to be wary of such objects. _Don't trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain_… How often had he heard that?

"_**You don't have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him.**_**"**

"What's wrong with just telling him?" Rose asked. "The memory could be tampered with just as easily as you could lie."

**Harry hesitated, his quill suspended over the diary. **

"He's not really going to do it?" James asked as Teddy stared hard at the book, like he might be able to break through the barrier of time and stop Harry from diving into Lord Voldemort's memories.

**What did Riddle mean? How could he be taken inside somebody else's memory?**

"Exactly," Rose muttered. "You can only do that with special equipment. There's something not right going on here."

**He glanced nervously at the door to the dormitory, which was growing dark. When he looked back at the diary, he saw fresh words forming.**

"_**Let me show you.**_**"**

Lily shivered, suddenly envisioning a leering wolf out of a muggle fairytale book guiding its unwitting prey into its den.

**Harry paused for a fraction of a second and then wrote two letters.**

"N-O" James supplied, staring as hard as everyone else at the book.

"**OK."**

"Dad!" James, Albus, and Lily all cried at the same time as Teddy and Rose exclaimed, "Harry!"

"Well, he doesn't know it's Voldemort," Scorpius reasoned.

"But still!" Albus said, frustrated. "He should know better!"

"He's twelve," Scorpius pointed out. "_And" _he hastened to add when Rose, Albus, and Lily opened their mouths. "He didn't have… well, himself for a father. How do you think your parents learned all the stuff they tell you?"

"Fair point," Teddy conceded. He supposed if he didn't know who T.M. Riddle was, he wouldn't think Harry had gone temporarily insane to dive into his memory. Because Harry also maintained that hunting leads took guts, you had to just do it. But Teddy did know who T.M. Riddle was and he really wished his twelve-year-old godfather had had someone to tell _him_ not to trust objects like that.

**The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June. Mouth hanging open, Harry saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a minuscule television screen. His hands trembling slightly, he raised the book to press his eye against the little window, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward; the window was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of color and shadow.**

Rose bit down on her lip as her brother described exactly what she'd been afraid would happen. Albus buried his face in his hands and James flopped back on the grass again, this time rather dejectedly. Teddy looked as if he wanted to reach out and grab the twelve-year-old Harry to stop him falling headlong into the diary.

But there was nothing any of them could do now except listen even harder as Hugo continued to read what happened next.

**He felt his feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as the blurred shapes around him came suddenly into focus.**

**He knew immediately where he was. This circular room with the sleeping portraits was Dumbledore's office — but it wasn't Dumbledore who was sitting behind the desk. A wizened, frail-looking wizard, bald except for a few wisps of white hair, was reading a letter by candlelight. Harry had never seen this man before.**

"The headmaster when Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts," Albus murmured, thinking how strange it was to imagine Voldemort being a student at Hogwarts. Almost three quarters of a century ago.

"**I'm sorry," he said shakily. "I didn't mean to butt in —"**

**But the wizard didn't look up. **

"Of course not, it's a memory," Rose said, but anxiety for her uncle kept any impatience out of her voice.

**He continued to read, frowning slightly. Harry drew nearer to his desk and stammered, "Er — I'll just go, shall I?"**

Teddy smiled faintly. Harry really had been young and innocent then. The smile faded when Teddy realized that this innocence would no doubt fade quickly. And he would see what had stolen it.

**Still the wizard ignored him. He didn't seem even to have heard him. Thinking that the wizard might be deaf, Harry raised his voice.**

This time Rose couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes, but her lips twitched in an amused smile.

"**Sorry I disturbed you. I'll go now," he half-shouted.**

Albus raised his head to exchange a look with Rose, amusement on his face.

**The wizard folded up the letter with a sigh, stood up, walked past Harry without glancing at him, and went to draw the curtains at his window.**

**The sky outside the window was ruby-red; it seemed to be sunset. The wizard went back to the desk, sat down, and twiddled his thumbs, watching the door.**

**Harry looked around the office. No Fawkes the phoenix — no whirring silver contraptions. This was Hogwarts as Riddle had known it, meaning that this unknown wizard was headmaster, not Dumbledore, and he, Harry, was little more than a phantom, completely invisible to the people of fifty years ago.**

"There you go," Rose muttered.

**There was a knock on the office door.**

"**Enter," said the old wizard in a feeble voice.**

**A boy of about sixteen entered, taking off his pointed hat. A silver prefect's badge was glinting on his chest. He was much taller than Harry, but he, too, had jet-black hair.**

"**Ah, Riddle," said the headmaster.**

A shiver went around the group as they realized that this teenage boy with jet-black hair (a description, James realized, which fit him, too) was – or would become – the source of so much pain and tragedy.

"**You wanted to see me, Professor Dippet?" said Riddle. He looked nervous.**

"**Sit down," said Dippet. "I've just been reading the letter you sent me."**

"**Oh," said Riddle. He sat down, gripping his hands together very tightly.**

"**My dear boy," said Dippet kindly, "I cannot possibly let you stay at school over the summer. Surely you want to go home for the holidays?"**

"**No," said Riddle at once. "I'd much rather stay at Hogwarts than go back to that — to that —"**

For the first time Albus wondered where Tom Riddle had come from. He didn't want to go home? Why not? Albus had never wondered _why _Voldemort was evil. He had never contemplated what his life had been like before he'd started killing. It had always just seemed as if he'd been born of all the dark, terrible things in the world for no other purpose or drive but to destroy as much as he could. But obviously, he had come from somewhere, there had been a before…. From the looks on some of the others' faces, they were realizing the same things he was.

"**You live in a Muggle orphanage during the holidays, I believe?" said Dippet curiously.**

Albus wondered why. He did not have the slightest bit of pity for Voldemort, not when his own father had come from far worse conditions than a Muggle orphanage and still turned out… well, a hero. But he still wondered what had landed him there in the first place.

"**Yes, sir," said Riddle, reddening slightly.**

"**You are Muggle-born?"**

"**Half-blood, sir," said Riddle. "Muggle father, witch mother."**

"But – " James sputtered, sitting bolt-upright again and gaping at the book. "But he – he fought two _wars _for blood _purity_! He should have had his head first on the chopping block!"

"You don't honestly think blood purity was all those wars were fought for?" Teddy said quietly.

"Well, no, but that was a huge part of it! How could he be Slytherin's heir if he's a half-blood?"

Teddy shrugged. "Maybe Slytherin's heir had nothing to do with blood. Maybe it was whoever was the heir to his ideas, you know?"

"Whatever," James said, brushing the dispute aside. "The real thing here is that he's a bloody hypocrite, like to the highest degree of the word!"

"Funny how tyrants turn out that way the way they do," said Teddy dryly. "I guess vanity just isn't a strong enough to drive someone to genocide. You've got to be struggling with some pretty strong self-loathing issues. Or you're just utterly and scarily insane."

"But if his dad was a Muggle," James persisted, disregarding Teddy's philosophical ponderings, "wouldn't that, you know, give him some sympathy?"

"Blood doesn't mean caring," Teddy said quietly.

"**And are both your parents — ?"**

"**My mother died just after I was born, sir. They told me at the orphanage she lived just long enough to name me — Tom after my father, Marvolo after my grandfather."**

Well, that was how it happened then, Albus thought. Tom Riddle was just a run-of-the mill orphan. Like so many other people. Maybe, if his parents had, maybe murdered each other in front of him or if something really terrible had happened to land him in the orphanage, then maybe Albus would have been able to pity him. But he knew too many orphans for that to be any kind of a source for pity or explanation of what he would become.

**Dippet clucked his tongue sympathetically.**

"**The thing is, Tom," he sighed, "special arrangements might have been made for you, but in the current circumstances. . . ."**

"**You mean all these attacks, sir?" said Riddle, and Harry's heart leapt, and he moved closer, scared of missing anything.**

"**Precisely," said the headmaster. "My dear boy, you must see how foolish it would be of me to allow you to remain at the castle when term ends. Particularly in light of the recent tragedy . . . the death of that poor little girl. . . . You will be safer by far at your orphanage. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Magic is even now talking about closing the school. We are no nearer locating the — er — source of all this unpleasantness. . . ."**

**Riddle's eyes had widened.**

"**Sir — if the person was caught — if it all stopped —"**

"**What do you mean?" said Dippet with a squeak in his voice, sitting up in his chair. "Riddle, do you mean you know something about these attacks?"**

"Yeah, a hell of a lot, actually," James muttered.

"So that's why he did it," Teddy said softly and all of them looked at him. "He didn't want to go back to the Muggles, so he pulled the plug. Didn't want the school shut down so he found someone to pin it on. But I bet he made sure there was a way for the chamber to be opened again. So someone else could finish the job."

"The question is, who's finishing the job," Rose said, and Teddy nodded.

"**No, sir," said Riddle quickly.**

**But Harry was sure it was the same sort of "no" that he himself had given Dumbledore.**

"No, I don't think they were the same at all," Teddy murmured.

**Dippet sank back, looking faintly disappointed.**

"**You may go, Tom. . . ."**

**Riddle slid off his chair and slouched out of the room. Harry followed him.**

**Down the moving spiral staircase they went, emerging next to the gargoyle in the darkening corridor. Riddle stopped, and so did Harry, watching him. Harry could tell that Riddle was doing some serious thinking. He was biting his lip, his forehead furrowed. **

**Then, as though he had suddenly reached a decision, he hurried off, Harry gliding noiselessly behind him. They didn't see another person until they reached the entrance hall, when a tall wizard with long, sweeping auburn hair and a beard called to Riddle from the marble staircase.**

"**What are you doing, wandering around this late, Tom?"**

**Harry gaped at the wizard. He was none other than a fifty-yearyounger Dumbledore.**

"Dumbledore _taught_ Voldemort?" Albus said in great surprise. "He actually _taught _him?"

"Guess so. He was ancient when he died," James shrugged.

"But… I dunno, that's just weird to me," said Albus.

"So, not only were you named after the biggest git in the world, but also the one who taught Voldemort everything he knows," James couldn't help but point out.

Albus made a face at him.

"**I had to see the headmaster, sir," said Riddle.**

"**Well, hurry off to bed," said Dumbledore, giving Riddle exactly the kind of penetrating stare Harry knew so well. "Best not to roam the corridors these days. Not since . . ."**

**He sighed heavily, bade Riddle good night, and strode off. Riddle watched him walk out of sight and then, moving quickly, headed straight down the stone steps to the dungeons, with Harry in hot pursuit.**

**But to Harry's disappointment, Riddle led him not into a hidden passageway or a secret tunnel but to the very dungeon in which Harry had Potions with Snape. **

"That's just… creepy," James said. "I think _we _have potions in that same dungeon."

"I might sleep in the same dormitory as Voldemort did," Scorpius realized suddenly, feeling like he might like to crawl out of his skin at the thought.

"That's really creepy," James told him unhelpfully.

**The torches hadn't been lit, and when Riddle pushed the door almost closed, Harry could only just see him, standing stock-still by the door, watching the passage outside.**

**It felt to Harry that they were there for at least an hour. All he could see was the figure of Riddle at the door, staring through the crack, waiting like a statue. And just when Harry had stopped feeling expectant and tense and started wishing he could return to the present, he heard something move beyond the door.**

Everyone tensed again. What was Riddle doing? Lily sincerely hoped they were not about to read about Voldemort killing someone else. She buried her head in Teddy's side, just in case.

**Someone was creeping along the passage. He heard whoever it was pass the dungeon where he and Riddle were hidden. Riddle, quiet as a shadow, edged through the door and followed, Harry tiptoeing behind him, forgetting that he couldn't be heard.**

**For perhaps five minutes they followed the footsteps, until Riddle stopped suddenly, his head inclined in the direction of new noises. Harry heard a door creak open, and then someone speaking in a hoarse whisper.**

"**C'mon . . . gotta get yeh outta here. . . . C'mon now . . . in the box . . ."**

**There was something familiar about that voice. . . .**

**Riddle suddenly jumped around the corner. Harry stepped out behind him. He could see the dark outline of a huge boy who was crouching in front of an open door, a very large box next to it.**

James suddenly snapped his head around to look at the book. Similar expressions of dawning comprehension and dread were spreading on the others' faces.

"Hagrid – " James started, remembering that Hagrid had been expelled and that his father knew why, but Hugo cut him off by reading.

" '**Evening, Rubeus," said Riddle sharply.**

"He's framing Hagrid!" James howled furiously. "This is why Hagrid got expelled!"

"No way," Fred said hollowly.

"That's terrible!" Lily said venomously, pulling away from Teddy now that she was sure no one was getting killed.

"That's an understatement," Albus muttered, looking angrier than Scorpius could remember seeing him (except maybe during that first month when they'd been sworn enemies).

Hugo plowed on, wanting all the details before they all began to rage and rant.

**The boy slammed the door shut and stood up.**

"**What yer doin' down here, Tom?"**

"Only screwing you over," James growled.

**Riddle stepped closer.**

"**It's all over," he said. "I'm going to have to turn you in, Rubeus. They're talking about closing Hogwarts if the attacks don't stop."**

"**What d'yeh —"**

"**I don't think you meant to kill anyone. But monsters don't make good pets. I suppose you just let it out for exercise and —"**

"**It never killed no one!" said the large boy, backing against the closed door. From behind him, Harry could hear a funny rustling and clicking.**

"Hagrid was keeping something in the castle," Rose groaned. "That's how Riddle got away with it!"

"Hagrid," Teddy moaned. "When a monster is attacking and killing people is not the time to be keeping a 'pet' in the school!"

"**Come on, Rubeus," said Riddle, moving yet closer. "The dead girl's parents will be here tomorrow. The least Hogwarts can do is make sure that the thing that killed their daughter is slaughtered. . . ."**

"**It wasn't him!" roared the boy, his voice echoing in the dark passage. "He wouldn'! He never!"**

"**Stand aside," said Riddle, drawing out his wand. **

**His spell lit the corridor with a sudden flaming light. The door behind the large boy flew open with such force it knocked him into the wall opposite. And out of it came something that made Harry let out a long, piercing scream unheard by anyone —**

"Why, what is it?" James demanded as everyone tensed again.

**A vast, low-slung, hairy body and a tangle of black legs; **

Hugo flung the book away from him, ending on a squeak and brushing his hands over the grass as if the spider had crawled right out of the book he'd been holding.

"Come on, Hugo, it's just in a book," Fred said impatiently to his little cousin.

"Leave him alone," Rose snapped. "How'd you like the image of your greatest fear in your head?"

She leaned forward and picked up the book, which her little brother was giving wary looks, and kept reading for him.

**a gleam of many eyes and a pair of razor-sharp pincers — Riddle raised his wand again, but he was too late. The thing bowled him over as it scuttled away, tearing up the corridor and out of sight. **

"It got let loose in the castle!" Hugo almost whimpered.

"It's not there anymore," Rose soothed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes because it was Hugo.

**Riddle scrambled to his feet, looking after it; he raised his wand, but the huge boy leapt on him, seized his wand, and threw him back down, yelling, "NOOOOOOO!"**

"Go Hagrid," James said, but he couldn't find the proper energy to make it a cheer at the moment.

**The scene whirled, the darkness became complete; Harry felt himself falling **

The rest snapped their eyes back to the book in Rose's hands, Teddy licking his lips, hoping Harry was coming out of the memory. Rose read as quickly as she could, eager for her uncle to get back safely.

**and, with a crash, he landed spread-eagled on his four-poster in the Gryffindor dormitory, Riddle's diary lying open on his stomach.**

Rose sighed with relief (along with half the group) as she turned the page and Teddy dropped his head forward, glad beyond words that nothing had happened inside that diary and rather shocked that Riddle had just let Harry go.

Maybe he'd been being stupid before. The sixteen-year-old Riddle didn't know about Harry Potter yet, after all. But it was a part of Voldemort, after all….

**Before he had had time to regain his breath, the dormitory door opened and Ron came in.**

"**There you are," he said.**

"Great timing," Teddy muttered.

**Harry sat up. He was sweating and shaking.**

"Can't blame him," Albus mumbled.

"**What's up?" said Ron, looking at him with concern.**

"**It was Hagrid, Ron. Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago."**

"No he didn't!" several people said furiously as Rose snapped the book shut and dropped on the grass.

And then the angry shouting and ranting broke out.

"Hagrid didn't even do anything!"

"The little twisted bas –"

"How could they believe him over Hagrid?"

"'cause Hagrid's half-giant, remember what Mum said that _woman _did to him?"

"He didn't deserve it!"

"For fifty years people thought that –"

"Everything! Every horrible thing that's happened can go straight back to _him_!"

"Yeah, 'cause he was a twisted bast – "

"I can't believe Dad believed that!"!

"Yeah, come on, Uncle Harry! It's Hagrid!"

"I wanna pound that Dippit guy's head in!"

"A little late for that."

"I could use his portrait!"

"Okay!" Teddy shouted after a while of this. "You guys want to keep reading, now or what?"

**Chapter 15-Cornelius Fudge**

Teddy leaned forward and grabbed the book, flipping it open to the place Rose had marked. "Ready?" he asked the others, who were still looking furious. Teddy himself was still seething at the injustice of it all, but he wanted to know what Harry was going to do about it – because Harry couldn't possibly _not _do something about it.

The rest nodded and so Teddy looked down at the book. But the second he saw the chapter title, he couldn't help but let out a derisive snort.

"Oh man, this ought to be good," he said under his breath, and, ignoring the others quizzical looks, started reading.

**Chapter Fourteen Cornelius Fudge**

"That's the bloke who let Voldemort gain power again," James said, recognizing the name from his History of Magic lessons as well as from half-forgotten conversations he'd overheard between his parents and aunts and uncles.

"Yup," Teddy nodded, "And believe it or not, that's only the half of it. You should hear what the Aurors say about that administration…"

"So why's he got his own chapter?" Lily inquired, looking as if she had a bad taste in her mouth just hearing about this man.

Teddy shrugged. "Guess we'll have to read and see."

**Harry, Ron, and Hermione had always known that Hagrid had an unfortunate liking for large and monstrous creatures.**

"Never a truer word," Teddy muttered as James said, "You can say that again." But while Teddy looked weary, James looked rather excited. He was starting Care of Magical Creatures the next term, and he couldn't wait to see what sort of creatures Hagrid would show them.

**During their first year at Hogwarts he had tried to raise a dragon in his little wooden house, and it would be a long time before they forgot the giant, three-headed dog he'd christened "Fluffy." **

"Good times," James snickered.

"I'm beginning to think they really were," Albus muttered. Compared to Slytherin's monster lurking around the school hunting down students, illegal Dragon-smuggling and sneaking past monstrous three-headed dogs was practically a blast.

**And if, as a boy, Hagrid had heard that a monster was hidden somewhere in the castle, Harry was sure he'd have gone to any lengths for a glimpse of it. He'd probably thought it was a shame that the monster had been cooped up so long, and thought it deserved the chance to stretch its many legs; Harry could just imagine the thirteen-year-old Hagrid trying to fit a leash and collar on it. But he was equally certain that Hagrid would never have meant to kill anybody.**

"You know, when he puts it like that…" Rose murmured.

James rounded on her. "You can't be saying that you would have believed it?"

"No! Well… I don't know! You've got to admit, Harry's reasoning makes a lot of sense!" she defended.

"It's Hagrid!" James exclaimed like nothing could trump that argument.

"Exactly," Rose said. "If you didn't know that Hagrid was still teaching at Hogwarts, if you didn't know that Tom Riddle was really Voldemort, if it was _you_ trying to solve this mystery and not just reading about your dad doing it, don't you think it would make a lot of sense?"

"No," James said stubbornly. "Hagrid wouldn't let something dangerous loose in the castle, especially something that might kill someone."

"I know, but, well… after seeing something like that, you can't blame them for thinking about it!"

Before James could retort, Teddy cut in. "Hey, not to interrupt, but can I keep going?"

**Harry half wished he hadn't found out how to work Riddle's diary.**

"Yeah, we were _all_ kind of wishing that last chapter," Rose muttered.

**Again and again Ron and Hermione made him recount what he'd seen, until he was heartily sick of telling them and sick of the long, circular conversations that followed.**

"**Riddle **_**might **_**have got the wrong person," said Hermione.**

"Yes, he just _might_ have," Fred said emphatically.

"Seeing as that was what meant to do," James added bitterly.

"**Maybe it was some other monster that was attacking people. . . ."**

"**How many monsters d'you think this place can hold?" Ron asked dully.**

"That's a good point," Rose said, frowning.

"It's a big place," James shrugged.

"**We always knew Hagrid had been expelled," said Harry miserably. "And the attacks must've stopped after Hagrid was kicked out. Otherwise, Riddle wouldn't have got his award."**

"Yeah, convenient," Fred snarled. "Shouldn't that tip them off something's not right about that Riddle bloke?"

**Ron tried a different tack.**

"**Riddle **_**does **_**sound like Percy — **

"He's _nothing _like Uncle Percy," Fred interrupted furiously. "Quit comparing the most evil wizard in a century to your brother, Uncle Ron!"

**who asked him to squeal on Hagrid, anyway?"**

"**But the monster had **_**killed **_**someone, Ron," said Hermione.**

"**And Riddle was going to go back to some Muggle orphanage if they closed Hogwarts," said Harry. "I don't blame him for wanting to stay here. . . ."**

_Pleas, Harry, please don't start empathizing with him,_ Teddy thought. He wasn't sure if he could handle his godfather's compassion to stretch to Voldemort, even if Harry had no idea who Tom Riddle really was.

"**You met Hagrid down Knockturn Alley, didn't you, Harry?"**

"He was buying Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent," several people said at once.

"**He was buying a Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent," said Harry quickly.**

**The three of them fell silent. After a long pause, Hermione voiced the knottiest question of all in a hesitant voice.**

"**Do you think we should go and **_**ask **_**Hagrid about it all?"**

"No," Rose and Albus said as James and Fred said "Yes"

"If they just ask Hagrid, he can tell them it wasn't him and they can start looking for a real lead," James said to Rose and Albus.

"And how exactly do you broach a conversation like that?" Rose demanded. "I mean, if they start asking Hagrid questions like that, how is that going to make him feel? It would be like they suspected him!"

"Well, they do," Fred pointed out.

"Not really," Albus said defensively. "They don't _want_ to suspect him."

"Whether they should or shouldn't, how do you bring something like that up?" Scorpius asked, feeling his stomach knot just imagining it.

"**That'd be a cheerful visit," said Ron. " 'Hello, Hagrid. Tell us, have you been setting anything mad and hairy loose in the castle lately?' "**

"Well, that is a good point," Fred conceded.

"Come on, have some Gryffindor courage about you," James said exasperatedly.

**In the end, they decided that they would not say anything to Hagrid unless there was another attack, and as more and more days went by with no whisper from the disembodied voice, they became hopeful that they would never need to talk to him about why he had been expelled. **

"Wimps," James muttered.

**It was now nearly four months since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been Petrified, and nearly everybody seemed to think that the attacker, whoever it was, had retired for good. **

Rose frowned and Albus got that cold feeling of dread in his stomach again. The moment people started to think nothing would happen, something always did.

**Peeves had finally got bored of his "Oh, Potter, you rotter" song, **

"About time," Lily said under her breath, hoping that the rest of the school would leave her father alone, too.

**Ernie Macmillan asked Harry quite politely to pass a bucket of leaping toadstools in Herbology one day, and in March several of the Mandrakes threw a loud and raucous party in greenhouse three. **

"Why couldn't our Mandrakes be that cool?" Fred complained.

"Yeah, we got real nerds for our assignment," James said glumly. "Their idea of a good time was pretending to be the Whomping Willow."

**This made Professor Sprout very happy. **

"**The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll know they're fully mature," she told Harry. "Then we'll be able to revive those poor people in the hospital wing."**

"Well, that's good," Hugo said, looking slightly relieved. "See, Lil? They're gonna be fine."

Lily smiled. It had been starting to really worry her, even though everyone else seemed to think the worst had already happened to the people who had been petrified.

**The second years were given something new to think about during their Easter holidays. The time had come to choose their subjects for the third year, **

"Oh, yeah," Teddy said. "I remember that. Nearly got buried in letters every morning from people sending me advice. The only useful thing I got out of them was a very loud and clear 'don't take divination'."

"Me too," James said, remembering the bombardment of owls he'd received when he'd written home about course selection.

"But you _did_ take divination," Fred reminded him, looking confused.

James shrugged. "It made me curious."

**a matter that Hermione, at least, took very seriously.**

"Yeah, Rose can't wait for next year," Albus grinned. "She's been planning her classes since we were five."

"Shut up, Al," Rose muttered, shoving him lightly.

"What? You were practically salivating when Fred and James were filling out their selection sheet."

"Well that explains the water marks on mine," said Fred.

Snickering with the rest, Teddy turned back to the book.

"**It could affect our whole future," she told Harry and Ron as they pored over lists of new subjects, marking them with checks.**

"Yeah, it does," Teddy nodded. "They really ought to tell you what's required for careers when you're picking your classes, not wait until fifth year when it's already too late."

"Why? Were you're dreams of being a unicorn breeder crushed when you realized you needed Care of Magical Creatures?" Fred asked, snickering.

"I took Care of Magical Creatures," Teddy said, rolling his eyes. "But it was hard to bounce back when they told me I couldn't be the next great seer because I hadn't taken Divination."

"**I just want to give up Potions," said Harry.**

"Snape wouldn't have any classes after second year if you could do that," James said, looking glum that Harry couldn't ditch Potions.

"**We can't," said Ron gloomily. "We keep all our old subjects, or I'd've ditched Defense Against the Dark Arts."**

"**But that's very important!" said Hermione, shocked.**

"**Not the way Lockhart teaches it," said Ron. "I haven't learned anything from him except not to set pixies loose."**

"Next year it'll be better," Teddy said, smiling slightly as he remembered that it was during Harry, Ron, and Hermione's third year that his father had been a professor. He felt a squirm of anticipation for the next book and hurriedly kept reading before he got distracted by the idea of reading about his father.

**Neville Longbottom had been sent letters from all the witches and wizards in his family, all giving him different advice on what to choose. Confused and worried, **

"Yeah, there is such a thing as too much advice," James muttered. His parents, grandparents, a lot of his aunts and uncles, and every one of his older cousins had felt the need to give him advice, most of which was conflicting. Molly and Dominique had gotten into a very heated argument over Arithmancy in the middle of the common room, Louis hadn't shut up about Care of Magical Creatures for the entire holiday, and Victoire had made him write up pro and con lists for all his choices when she caught him picking random subjects. (That last one might also have had something to do with the amount of detentions he hand Fred had already achieved during the first half of the Easter holidays.)

**he sat reading the subject lists with his tongue poking out, asking people whether they thought Arithmancy sounded more difficult than the study of Ancient Runes. Dean Thomas, who, like Harry, had grown up with Muggles, ended up closing his eyes and jabbing his wand at the list, then picking the subjects it landed on. **

"He's lucky he didn't have Vic as a cousin," James muttered.

**Hermione took nobody's advice but signed up for everything.**

"What?" James said in horror.

"Can you even do that?" Scorpius asked.

"No," Rose said a bit disappointedly. "I asked Neville, and he said there wasn't enough time in the schedule."

"Merlin, that would be _insane_ if she really did take every class," James said, sighing in relief. "I mean, I know she's good, but even Hermione isn't that good."

**Harry smiled grimly to himself at the thought of what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would say if he tried to discuss his career in wizardry with them. **

And suddenly all those letters and arguing cousins didn't seem quite as annoying to James.

Teddy kept reading, but a shadow had crossed his face and James knew he was thinking along the same lines. The rest just looked angry or miserable at the reminder of Harry's home 'family'.

**Not that he didn't get any guidance: Percy Weasley was eager to share his experience.**

"I'm sure," Teddy muttered, smirking to himself as he thought about Victoire being spirited around England with her uncle. He was just glad he'd made up his mind to be an Auror long before graduation came.

"**Depends where you want to **_**go, **_**Harry," he said. "It's never too early to think about the future, so I'd recommend Divination. People say Muggle Studies is a soft option, but I personally think wizards should have a thorough understanding of the non-magical community,**

"Yeah, I think Harry already has that," Rose said with amusement. "But good advice nonetheless."

**particularly if they're thinking of working in close contact with them — look at my father, he has to deal with Muggle business all the time. My brother Charlie was always more of an outdoor type, so he went for Care of Magical Creatures. Play to your strengths, Harry."**

**But the only thing Harry felt he was really good at was Quidditch.**

"Typical," Teddy said with amusement as James laughed. "I guess they don't have an elective for mystery solving or defeating Voldemort."

Albus looked down, smiling slightly. That was exactly the sort of thing he'd been thinking while Rose had been listing all of her class choices and enumerating reasons for taking them with Scorpius. He wasn't bad at schoolwork. But Rose always beat him out and so did Scorpius half the time. But he was good at Quidditch. That much he knew. He couldn't believe that his father – who Albus considered good at just about everything except chess – had once felt the exact same way.

**In the end, he chose the same new subjects as Ron, feeling that if he was lousy at them, at least he'd have someone friendly to help him.**

"Well I suppose that isn't such a bad strategy," Teddy smiled. His friend, Rob, had gone that route too, but Teddy thought it had more to do with the fact that Rob was too lazy to really consider all his choices and make decisions.

**Gryffindor's next Quidditch match would be against Hufflepuff.**

"Excellent!" James and Fred said together at the prospect of more Quidditch.

**Wood was insisting on team practices every night after dinner, so that Harry barely had time for anything but Quidditch and homework. However, the training sessions were getting better, or at least drier, **

"That's definitely an improvement," Fred said fervently, recalling the month of rainy practices he'd had to suffer though last year.

**and the evening before Saturday's match he went up to his dormitory to drop off his broomstick feeling Gryffindor's chances for the Quidditch Cup had never been better.**

**But his cheerful mood didn't last long. **

"Why not?" Lily asked suspiciously.

Albus and Rose both sat up a little straighter, expecting something to do with the chamber.

**At the top of the stairs to the dormitory, he met Neville Longbottom, **

"Oh, that explains it," Fred couldn't stop himself form saying,

Rose threw an acorn at his head and Lily reached over to flick his ear.

"Be nice," they ordered together.

"Okay, okay, jeez," he muttered, rubbing his ear. "Bet Professor Longbottom would've laughed."

**who was looking frantic.**

"**Harry — I don't know who did it — I just found —"**

"What's going on?" Hugo asked worriedly.

**Watching Harry fearfully, Neville pushed open the door. The contents of Harry's trunk had been thrown everywhere. His cloak lay ripped on the floor. The bedclothes had been pulled off his four-poster and the drawer had been pulled out of his bedside cabinet, the contents strewn over the mattress.**

James swore. The rest looked bewildered and a little angry.

"Who would do that?" Lily whispered.

"And more importantly, why?" Rose asked.

"Could have been a crazy fan girl looking for a lock of his hair or his diary or something," Fred tried to joke. "Maybe it was Aunt Ginny. She saw Malfoy waving around what he thought was Uncle Harry's diary."

"Maybe it was some vigilante who still thinks he's the heir and was trying to find proof," Rose suggested, ignoring Fred.

"And your dad had Tom Riddle's diary," Scorpius realized, looking at Albus with wide eyes.

"We don't even know if they took anything yet," Albus said quickly, his stomach sinking. If someone showed that diary to Dumbledore, it would put his dad in a tight corner.

**Harry walked over to the bed, openmouthed, treading on a few loose pages of **_**Travels with Trolls. **_

"Well, at least the long-overdue destruction of that fowl thing was achieved," Fred muttered.

**As he and Neville pulled the blankets back onto his bed, Ron, Dean, and Seamus came in. Dean swore loudly.**

"**What happened, Harry?"**

"**No idea," said Harry. But Ron was examining Harry's robes. All the pockets were hanging out.**

"**Someone's been looking for something," said Ron. "Is there anything missing?"**

**Harry started to pick up all his things and throw them into his trunk. It was only as he threw the last of the Lockhart books back into it that he realized what wasn't there.**

"**Riddle's diary's gone," he said in an undertone to Ron.**

James swore again and Albus felt his stomach sink even lower.

"If they start saying it was Dad again –" Lily began furiously.

"That diary doesn't prove anything except to some of the Professors. It's blank," Teddy tried to reassure them all. "And Dumbledore would believe Harry if he told him the real story."

"So then why take it?" Rose asked. "If people didn't know that T.M. Riddle was Voldemort, why think that diary was suspicious at all?"

"They must have known what they were looking for," Albus said quietly.

"So maybe it was whoever's opening the chamber this time," said Fred.

"And that means," Scorpius said slowly. "That they probably have whatever they need to start opening the chamber again."

They all exchanged nervous looks.

"Maybe they just didn't want to get caught," Hugo suggested half-heartedly.

"Then they would have just left Harry with the incriminating evidence," Rose told him, but he hadn't needed his sister to point out the flaw in his theory.

"_**What **_**?"**

**Harry jerked his head toward the dormitory door and Ron followed him out. They hurried down to the Gryffindor common room, which was half-empty, and joined Hermione, who was sitting alone, reading a book called **_**Ancient Runes Made Easy.**_

**Hermione looked aghast at the news.**

"**But — only a Gryffindor could have stolen — nobody else knows our password —"**

Rose gasped. "I hadn't even thought of that."

"Whoever's opening the chamber cannot be a Gryffindor," James said firmly.

"But how else could they get into Harry's Dormitory?" Rose insisted.

"Maybe it really was a crazy fan girl like Aunt Ginny," Fred suggested again, but nobody paid him any attention.

"The teachers know the passwords," Teddy pointed out. "And someone could have let them in. Me and Rob used to hang out in the Huffelpuff common room with Sadie all the time."

"Yeah, but this is letting a _Slytherin _into _Gryffindor_ tower," James said. "That wouldn't happen in a million years!"

Albus cleared his throat loudly.

"Okay, well at least not for another twenty-five," James amended. "And Scorp doesn't really count as a Slytherin. He's not all pro-blood-purity."

"It's not necessarily a Slytherin," Rose reminded James.

James rolled his eyes. "Where else are you going to find a pure-blood maniac psychotic enough attack other kids?"

"Well, according to your rules, Slytherins can't get into our tower, so it's must have been a Gryffindor then."

James shrugged.

Teddy started reading again.

"**Exactly," said Harry.**

**They woke the next day to brilliant sunshine and a light, refreshing breeze.**

"**Perfect Quidditch conditions!" said Wood enthusiastically **

"I've missed hearing about him," James sighed. "No one else has quite enough enthusiasm for Quidditch."

**at the Gryffindor table, loading the team's plates with scrambled eggs. "Harry, buck up there, you need a decent breakfast."**

**Harry had been staring down the packed Gryffindor table, wondering if the new owner of Riddle's diary was right in front of his eyes. Hermione had been urging him to report the robbery, but Harry didn't like the idea. He'd have to tell a teacher all about the diary, and how many people knew why Hagrid had been expelled fifty years ago? He didn't want to be the one who brought it all up again.**

"Probably smart since it would look suspicious if he had to explain that he'd had Riddle's diary," Teddy murmured.

"But it might help Dumbledore figure out who the real heir is," Rose said.

"Which just means Dad won't tell anyone about it and try to figure it out himself," James grinned. Although he would rather have his father _not_ have to face off against Slytherin's monster, he couldn't help but be a little proud that he hadn't gone running to a teacher.

**As he left the Great Hall with Ron and Hermione to go and collect his Quidditch things, another very serious worry was added to Harry's growing list. **

Teddy paused, his blood turning cold as he caught sight of the italicized words a few lines down. The others looked apprehensively at the book as he continued in a quiet voice.

**He had just set foot on the marble staircase when he heard it yet again —**

"No," Rose whispered, although she'd been expecting something like it.

"_**Kill this time **_**. . . **_**let me rip **_**. . . **_**tear **_**. . ."**

Lily pushed her head under Teddy's arm, Albus, Rose, and Scorpius exchanged fearful looks, James swore for a third time, Fred tore up a fistful of grass, his knuckles white, and Hugo's eyes widened.

Teddy kept reading in a tense voice.

**He shouted aloud and Ron and Hermione both jumped away from him in alarm.**

"**The voice!" said Harry, looking over his shoulder. "I just heard it again — didn't you?"**

**Ron shook his head, wide-eyed. Hermione, however, clapped a hand to her forehead.**

"She's figured it out!" James cried, excitement marred by anxiety.

"**Harry — I think I've just understood something! I've got to go to the library!"**

**And she sprinted away, up the stairs.**

"Now if she could just explain it to the rest of us!" Fred exclaimed in frustration.

"_**What **_**does she understand?" said Harry distractedly, still looking around, trying to tell where the voice had come from.**

"**Loads more than I do," said Ron, shaking his head.**

"Still the truth," James snickered, trying to break the mounting tension.

"**But why's she got to go to the library?"**

"Because that's what – " James started, but Teddy, anxious to hear what was going to happen, read over him.

"**Because that's what Hermione does," said Ron, shrugging. "When in doubt, go to the library."**

"Well, at least _someone _got the chance to say that," James muttered.

**Harry stood, irresolute, trying to catch the voice again, but people were now emerging from the Great Hall behind him, talking loudly, exiting through the front doors on their way to the Quidditch pitch.**

"A good place to be right now," Scorpius murmured.

"**You'd better get moving," said Ron. "It's nearly eleven — the match —"**

**Harry raced up to Gryffindor Tower, collected his Nimbus Two Thousand, and joined the large crowd swarming across the grounds, but his mind was still in the castle along with the bodiless voice, and as he pulled on his scarlet robes in the locker room, his only comfort was that everyone was now outside to watch the game.**

"Yeah, that's good," Hugo said almost to himself.

_Not everyone, _Albus thought, remembering that Hermione had run off to the library rather than outside with the rest of the school. But she wouldn't be attacked, he tried to assure himself. Surely they would have heard about that before. Hermione was smart, and she was a step ahead of the rest of them judging by her recent reverie. Besides, she was in the _library_. He somehow couldn't imagine Slytherin's monster hanging out in there. But then he had a sudden image of a hulking beast moving soundlessly between the endless, vacant rows of books, eyes glinting and he shuddered.

Albus glanced sideways at Rose, but if she was nervous about who the next victim would be, it didn't show.

**The teams walked onto the field to tumultuous applause. Oliver Wood took off for a warm-up flight around the goal posts; Madam Hooch released the balls. The Hufflepuffs, who played in canary yellow, were standing in a huddle, having a last-minute discussion of tactics.**

**Harry was just mounting his broom when Professor McGonagall came half marching, half running across the pitch, carrying an enormous purple megaphone.**

Everybody seemed to have stopped breathing. Hugo was looking wide-eyed and pale at the book, and Lily kept herself pressed into Teddy's side. Albus felt his stomach turn over, even though he had known an attack was coming. _It's not Hermione_ he told himself. _Stop thinking like that. _

**Harry's heart dropped like a stone.**

"**This match has been canceled," Professor McGonagall called through the megaphone, addressing the packed stadium. There were boos and shouts. Oliver Wood, looking devastated, landed and ran toward Professor McGonagall without getting off his broomstick.**

No one – not even James – said a word about the match being canceled. They were all too busy worrying about _why _it had been canceled, about the next attack.

"**But, Professor!" he shouted. "We've got to play — the Cup — **_**Gryffindor **_**—"**

**Professor McGonagall ignored him and continued to shout through her megaphone:**

"**All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"**

**Then she lowered the megaphone and beckoned Harry over to her.**

"No," James murmured. "Dad didn't do anything! He wasn't even in the castle this time!"

But Albus's blood had gone cold. He knew what was coming. He glanced again at Rose, but she was staring hard at the book. Scorpius caught his glance, and Albus saw understanding and then horror spread across his friend's face.

"**Potter, I think you'd better come with me. . . ."**

**Wondering how she could possibly suspect him this time, Harry saw Ron detach himself from the complaining crowd; he came running up to them as they set off toward the castle. To Harry's surprise, Professor McGonagall didn't object.**

Teddy knew where this was going, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the words, couldn't stop his voice from reading, couldn't believe it until he saw it written out on the page. Rose was still staring hard at the book, Hugo didn't seem to have figured it out yet, or maybe, like Teddy, he wouldn't even think about it until he heard it read out. Albus felt like his insides had frozen solid and wished the book would just say what he knew was coming so he could stop dreading it.

"**Yes, perhaps you'd better come, too, Weasley. . . ."**

**Some of the students swarming around them were grumbling about the match being canceled; others looked worried. Harry and Ron followed Professor McGonagall back into the school and up the marble staircase. But they weren't taken to anybody's office this time.**

Lily had pulled herself upright again and was looking at Hugo, biting her lip. Fred and James were looking stony-faced. Rose still had no expression on her face.

"**This will be a bit of a shock," said Professor McGonagall in a surprisingly gentle voice as they approached the infirmary. "There has been another attack . . . another **_**double **_**attack."**

And for the first time in several paragraphs, something penetrated the cold dread inside of Albus: a numb sort of curiosity. Who was the second person who had been attacked?

**Harry's insides did a horrible somersault. Professor McGonagall pushed the door open and he and Ron entered.**

**Madam Pomfrey was bending over a sixth-year girl with long, curly hair. Harry recognized her as the Ravenclaw they'd accidentally asked for directions to the Slytherin common room. **

Albus felt his chest constrict slightly as he remembered reading about the girl, but it was nothing to what he knew was coming. They all must have figured it out by now, but the rest still had determinedly set expressions. Lily was edging closer to Hugo.

**And on the bed next to her was —**

"_**Hermione**_**!" Ron groaned.**

And suddenly Teddy couldn't make his voice work anymore. Slowly, he lowered the book, and with unwilling eyes looked up at the rest.

Without a word, James stood up and strode off into the trees. Fred looked after him uncertainly for a minute before he scrambled up and followed.

Hugo was staring straight ahead, blue eyes huge. Lily carefully touched his arm and he let out a sort of squeak. Teddy reached around Lily to squeeze Hugo's shoulder.

"It's alright," Teddy said quietly. "You know she's fine. They've nearly got the Mandrakes ready. Your mum's fine."

Hugo nodded, but his wide eyes didn't change. He couldn't believe it. He was trying to, trying to understand that his twelve-year-old mother had lain stiff and unresponsive in a bed in the hospital wing. What had it been like to be petrified? Had it hurt? How long had she been frozen, statue-like? With all the other victims he had not even thought to wonder about those things. With the rest it was just a looming shadow of what was lurking in the castle. But now he wondered what it had been like for those who had been attacked…

"Rose?" Albus said anxiously, for Rose was still staring at the book Teddy had set down.

She barely heard her cousin's voice. There was a ringing in her ears. She had not expected it. A logical part of her brain might have put the pieced together when her mother had dashed off to the library instead of out onto the grounds, but the part of her that still believed that nothing could happen to her parents because they were _her _parents, that wouldn't even contemplate the possibility, had managed to push the logic aside, block it out.

Someone was shaking her shoulder gently. Rose blinked and suddenly became aware that it was Scorpius. He and Albus were both giving her worried looks, and Teddy was glancing between

her and Hugo worriedly.

"Well," she said quietly. "Guess we don't have to worry about Mum anymore."

She drew her knees up and rested her arms across them. Albus and Scorpius exchanged miserable looks.

"James?" Fred asked, following half a step behind his cousin as he pushed his way deeper into the trees. "James, what's up? Why'd you just take off?"

James stopped suddenly and Fred nearly walked into him. He had gone rather pale and was chewing his lip. Fred waited. It wouldn't be long now. He could almost see the detonation clock ticking away on his cousin. And sure enough –

"This shouldn't happen!" James burst out furiously. "Not just Hermione or when our parents were in school. People – _kids _– shouldn't hate someone so much just because of their parents that they would hunt them down like this! This is a kid, Fred. And Hermione, she was a kid. She was _our _age and she got petrified just because her parents weren't magic! It's sick, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is," Fred agreed.

"We've heard about it all our lives, haven't we? How bad it used to be, that people got killed and worse because of prejudice. It shouldn't really surprise me, I guess, but somehow it didn't seem real. I mean, we go to the memorials every year and we see the graves and we know _why_, but we don't know, do we? We don't really understand, we just… just hear and see… God, I'm starting to sound like Al."

"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," Fred said quietly. "I wish I could think more like Al sometimes. You know, before I go say something stupid."

"Al says plenty of stupid things," James snorted, but he was still looking far away.

Fred punched him on the arm. "Hey? We won in the end, didn't we? Pretty soon your dad's gonna catch the heir of Slytherin and him and Uncle Ron'll beat the crap out of his monster for coming near Aunt Hermione, just like that troll, yeah?"

James's mouth twitched as he punched Fred back. "Yeah, I s'pose."

"Don't _suppose_, you know!" Fred said, pulling James into a headlock. "Your Dad's gonna kick the heir of Slytherin's arse! Send him crying just like he does now with all the bad guys!"

"Bad guys? What are you, five?" James sniggered, breaking free of Fred's grip and jumping on his back.

The pair of them wrestled their way back to the shed where the others sat waiting, shoving each other into trees and crushing undergrowth as they went.

"Hey," Fred said genially to the rest as he dropped down, panting, a few minutes later. He glanced at Hugo beside him. "You alright, kid?" he asked, nudging him in the ribs.

Hugo shrugged, but he wasn't wide-eyed and staring anymore.

James sank to the ground beside Fred, bits of leaf and grass in his hair, but ignored Al's, Teddy's, and Lily's questioning looks.

"Are we gonna keep going?" he asked.

Teddy looked around at the others. "Are you ready to?"

He was really talking to Rose and Hugo. Rose nodded and Hugo shrugged again, so Teddy decided to keep going. He winced inwardly at the very next line, but read through it quickly anyway. If they were going to read this, they better read every word.

**Hermione lay utterly still, her eyes open and glassy.**

Hugo winced visibly and Lily silently took hold of his hand. Albus looked sideways at Rose, feeling his own stomach clench at the description. Rose didn't give any sign that she had heard. James looked down and Fred picked miserably at a blade of grass.

"**They were found near the library," said Professor McGonagall. "I don't suppose either of you can explain this? It was on the floor next to them. . . ."**

**She was holding up a small, circular mirror.**

Teddy filed away the information, aware that it must be part of the mystery, but unable, just now, to analyze what a mirror might have to do with anything. The rest barely seemed to notice the odd detail.

**Harry and Ron shook their heads, both staring at Hermione.**

"If we don't like hearing about it, it must have been so much worse for them," Rose said so quietly that only Albus and Scorpius heard her. "They had to see it, and they didn't know for a fact that she would be okay."

She imagined seeing Al or Scorpius like that and shuddered a little. She really , really hoped whatever monster was in the school had been slaughtered this time.

"**I will escort you back to Gryffindor Tower," said Professor McGonagall heavily. "I need to address the students in any case."**

"**All students will return to their House common rooms by six o'clock in the evening. No student is to leave the dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. **

"That would be annoying," Fred mumbled.

**All further Quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no more evening activities."**

James did not comment how boring that would be. The gravity of the situation was still hanging to heavily over him to be in a very jocular mood.

**The Gryffindors packed inside the common room listened to Professor McGonagall in silence. She rolled up the parchment from which she had been reading and said in a somewhat choked voice, "I need hardly add that I have rarely been so distressed. It is likely that the school will be closed unless the culprit behind these attacks is caught. I would urge anyone who thinks they might know anything about them to come forward."**

**She climbed somewhat awkwardly out of the portrait hole, and the Gryffindors began talking immediately.**

"**That's two Gryffindors down, not counting a Gryffindor ghost, one Ravenclaw, and one Hufflepuff," said the Weasley twins' friend Lee Jordan, counting on his fingers. "Haven't **_**any **_**of the teachers noticed that the Slytherins are all safe? **

"Well, they're almost all pure-bloods," Scorpius muttered. "You wouldn't catch a Muggle-born in Slytherin."

**Isn't it **_**obvious **_**all this stuff 's coming from Slytherin? The **_**Heir **_**of Slytherin, the **_**monster **_**of Slytherin — why don't they just chuck all the Slytherins out?" he roared, **

"Hear hear," James said, though much less enthusiastically than he ordinarily would have.

"Not all the Slytherins are evil," Teddy said tiredly. "Most of them aren't, in fact. And you don't have to be in Slytherin to be prejudice."

"No, but it seems like you have to be prejudice to be in Slytherin," James countered.

"No you d – "

"We've been through this. Scorp doesn't count!"

**to nods and scattered applause.**

**Percy Weasley was sitting in a chair behind Lee, but for once he didn't seem keen to make his views heard. He was looking pale and stunned.**

"What's up with him?" Fred asked, frowning.

"**Percy's in shock," George told Harry quietly. "That Ravenclaw girl — Penelope Clearwater — she's a prefect. I don't think he thought the monster would dare attack a **_**prefect.**_**"**

Fred would have snickered, but it didn't seem like the appropriate moment to make fun of his uncle's teenage big-headedness.

**But Harry was only half-listening. He didn't seem to be able to get rid of the picture of Hermione, lying on the hospital bed as though carved out of stone. **

Most of them looked down.

"Yeah, that would be a tough image to forget," Teddy said quietly.

**And if the culprit wasn't caught soon, he was looking at a lifetime back with the Dursleys. **

"Now that really is a depressing thought," said James.

**Tom Riddle had turned Hagrid in because he was faced with the prospect of a Muggle orphanage if the school closed. Harry now knew exactly how he had felt.**

"No, Dad, you never will know how he _felt_," James snarled, anger returning in full force.

"**What're we going to do?" said Ron quietly in Harry's ear.**

"Exactly! Fight back, get a plan," Fred nodded.

"**D'you think they suspect Hagrid?"**

"Probably," Teddy sighed. "If he got expelled for it last time, they almost have to question him about it now…"

Anger was beginning to surface on everyone's face again.

"**We've got to go and talk to him," said Harry, making up his mind. "I can't believe it's him this time, but if he set the monster loose last time he'll know how to get inside the Chamber of Secrets, and that's a start."**

"And what exactly does he expect to do inside the Chamber if all he knows is how to get in?" Rose asked.

"What he always does; figure something out," Teddy grinned.

"**But McGonagall said we've got to stay in our tower unless we're in class —"**

"Come on, Uncle Ron," Fred said in mock disappointment. "You can't honestly still think you aren't going to find a way around that?"

"**I think," said Harry, more quietly still, "it's time to get my dad's old cloak out again."**

"Have they really gone all year without using it?" James asked incredulously.

"Well, sneaking around wasn't really high on their priority list next to catching the heir of Slytherin," Rose pointed out.

**Harry had inherited just one thing from his father: a long and silvery Invisibility Cloak. It was their only chance of sneaking out of the school to visit Hagrid without anyone knowing about it. They went to bed at the usual time, waited until Neville, Dean, and Seamus had stopped discussing the Chamber of Secrets and finally fallen asleep, then got up, dressed again, and threw the cloak over themselves.**

**The journey through the dark and deserted castle corridors wasn't enjoyable. Harry, who had wandered the castle at night several times before, **

James couldn't help but feel a twinge of pride. Granted most of those wonderings had not been solely for the rush of breaking the rules and infuriating Filch, but there had been times when he had wondered if his father had done any of the things James loved to do aside from Quidditch.

**had never seen it so crowded after sunset. Teachers, prefects, and ghosts were marching the corridors in pairs, staring around for any unusual activity. Their Invisibility Cloak didn't stop them making any noise, and there was a particularly tense moment when Ron stubbed his toe only yards from the spot where Snape stood standing guard. Thankfully, Snape sneezed at almost exactly the moment Ron swore. **

"Thank Merlin for hay fever," Fred smirked.

**It was with relief that they reached the oak front doors and eased them open.**

**It was a clear, starry night. They hurried toward the lit windows of Hagrid's house and pulled off the cloak only when they were right outside his front door. **

**Seconds after they had knocked, Hagrid flung it open. They found themselves face-to-face with him aiming a crossbow at them.**

Several sets of eyes widened in surprise. None of them had been on the receiving end of Hagrid's aim before, but it seemed like a scary place and not one they ever expected Harry and Ron to be in.

"Probably thought it was someone coming for him," Teddy muttered sadly.

**Fang the boarhound barked loudly behind him.**

"**Oh," he said, lowering the weapon and staring at them. "What're you two doin' here?"**

"**What's that for?" said Harry, pointing at the crossbow as they stepped inside.**

"**Nothin' — nothin' — " Hagrid muttered. "I've bin expectin' — doesn' matter — Sit down — I'll make tea —"**

**He hardly seemed to know what he was doing. He nearly extinguished the fire, spilling water from the kettle on it, and then smashed the teapot with a nervous jerk of his massive hand.**

"He's probably been jumpy for ages, expecting someone to come interrogate him again," Rose said sympathetically.

"Bet Dumbledore's been keeping them off as long as he can," Albus mumbled. "He got Hagrid the job as game keeper, didn't he? Probably knew it was Riddle all along but just couldn't prove it."

"**Are you okay, Hagrid?" said Harry. "Did you hear about Hermione?"**

"**Oh, I heard, all righ'," said Hagrid, a slight break in his voice.**

"That must have been the worst," Lily said just as sympathetically as Rose. "People accusing him of attacking one of his friends."

Teddy smiled at the true sadness in Lily's voice. She could go from spitting mad to devastated for someone else faster than almost anyone he knew. He hoped she never out-grew it.

**He kept glancing nervously at the windows. He poured them both large mugs of boiling water (he had forgotten to add tea bags) and was just putting a slab of fruitcake on a plate when there was a loud knock on the door.**

"I'll bet that's them," Rose whispered.

"That must be why that Fudge guy gets his own chapter ," James said dully. "He came to question Hagrid. Sounds like something he would do, the prat."

**Hagrid dropped the fruitcake. Harry and Ron exchanged panicstricken looks, then threw the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves and retreated into a corner. Hagrid checked that they were hidden, seized his crossbow, and flung open his door once more.**

"**Good evening, Hagrid."**

**It was Dumbledore. **

"Well, that wasn't what I expected," Albus said.

**He entered, looking deadly serious, and was followed by a second, very odd-looking man.**

**The stranger had rumpled gray hair and an anxious expression, and was wearing a strange mixture of clothes: a pinstriped suit, a scarlet tie, a long black cloak, and pointed purple boots. Under his arm he carried a lime-green bowler.**

"That's more what I expected," Teddy sighed.

"That's him?" James asked incredulously. "_That's _the Minister of Magic?"

He couldn't suppress a snort of laughter. Kingsley and his calm, in-control, authoritative presence popped into James's head beside what sounded rather like a retired circus clown and he had to fight not to burst out laughing. How did this man ever be elected Minister?

"**That's Dad's boss!" Ron breathed. "Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic!"**

**Harry elbowed Ron hard to make him shut up.**

**Hagrid had gone pale and sweaty. He dropped into one of his chairs and looked from Dumbledore to Cornelius Fudge.**

"**Bad business, Hagrid," said Fudge in rather clipped tones. "Very bad business. Had to come. Four attacks on Muggle-borns. Things've gone far enough. Ministry's got to act."**

"Whether they know anything about it at all or not," Teddy muttered under his breath. He supposed it was unfair to compare this blustering, foolish man to Kingsley, but he could tell from just that paragraph that Kingsley would have handled this so much better.

"_One _attack should have been far enough," Rose muttered, scowling at the book. "Not that I think coming to badger Hagrid any earlier would have been done anything, but shouldn't the Ministry have gotten involved earlier? This was assault! Aurors should have been looking into this from the beginning. It doesn't sound like he's done anything but sit back and twiddle his thumbs and hope that someone else would take care of things!"

"That's pretty much what his entire term was like," Teddy said dryly. "And you know who had to clean up his messes? Dumbledore and Harry."

"**I never," said Hagrid, looking imploringly at Dumbledore. "You know I never, Professor Dumbledore, sir —"**

Albus felt a wave of pity and sympathy for Hagrid at these words. How must it feel to be accused of something like _this_? To have people thinking that you were mad or dangerous and not even listen when you tried to tell them otherwise? To know that they wouldn't listen? Hagrid was one of his favorite people in the world. He hated that his had happened to him.

"**I want it understood, Cornelius, that Hagrid has my full confidence," said Dumbledore, frowning at Fudge.**

"Then why are you letting Fudge 'act'?" Lily asked the book angrily.

"Because, unfortunately, the Minister of Magic still has more authority than even Dumbledore, technically," Teddy said glumly.

"**Look, Albus," **

Albus started at his name, half-forgetting that Dumbledore had a first name and that people did sometimes use it. James snickered at him and Albus made a face at him.

**said Fudge, uncomfortably. "Hagrid's record's against him. Ministry's got to do something — the school governors have been in touch —"**

"**Yet again, Cornelius, I tell you that taking Hagrid away will not help in the slightest," said Dumbledore. **

"Wait a minute, take him away?" James asked dangerously.  
"Where are they taking him?" Lily demanded.

"They can't just take him away!" Rose said, real fury finally penetrating her expression as she bristled. Albus felt a twinge of relief under his own fury. Rose was fine if she could still get that expression on her face.

Teddy kept reading, a sinking feeling in his stomach again. Hagrid, of all people, did not deserve that place.

**His blue eyes were full of a fire Harry had never seen before.**

"You'd think that would scare fudge into backing off," James muttered.

"**Look at it from my point of view," said Fudge, fidgeting with his bowler. "I'm under a lot of pressure. **

"Oh yes! Poor you!" Rose said acidly. "Turns out people actually expect their leaders to _do _something. Hagrid'll be _glad _to take the fall for your ego now that you put it like that." She subsided into furious mutterings and Teddy read on, fury and incredulity bubbling in his chest at the next words. How had the wizarding world functioned under this man's administration?

**Got to be seen to be doing something.**

"_Seem?_" Rose nearly shrieked while the others seethed. "This is all for appearance's sake? He's 'taking Hagrid away' so he can look good? Did it ever occur to him to actually _do something?_"

"That phony bast –" Fred growled.

"What happened to him, Teddy?" James demanded furiously. "Please tell me they decided to set an angry pack of garden gnomes on him after this?"

"I wish," Teddy said bitterly, although his lips twitched at James's suggestion. "I think they just let him stew in his own shame, guilt, and public humiliation, knowing that every escalation of the war was on his head."

"I think they should have added the gnomes just because he's a phony bast – "

**If it turns out it wasn't Hagrid, he'll be back and no more said. But I've got to take him. Got to. Wouldn't be doing my duty —"**

"Your _duty _is to make sure _innocent people _don't get hurt! Not throw them under the bus for your own image!" Rose seethed.

"You know, you sound a lot like your mum and Harry when they get on this topic," Teddy told Rose approvingly.

She looked rather pleased.

"**Take me?" said Hagrid, who was trembling. "Take me where?"**

"**For a short stretch only," said Fudge, not meeting Hagrid's eyes.**

"The lest he could do was look Hagrid in the eye while he 'threw him under the bus'," Teddy muttered angrily.

"**Not a punishment, Hagrid, more a precaution. If someone else is caught, you'll be let out with a full apology —"**

"I can't believe this man!" Rose exploded. " 'More a precaution'? Where are they taking him, Teddy?"

For answer, Teddy read on, a steely note in his voice.

"**Not Azkaban?" croaked Hagrid.**

"NO!" James, Fred, Albus, Lily, and Scorpius all burst out, shooting bolt-upright.

"They _wouldn't_ arrest him with now evidence!" Rose said as though she could make it true by voicing it with enough force.

"You'd think," Teddy snarled bitterly.

**Before Fudge could answer, there was another loud rap on the door.**

**Dumbledore answered it. It was Harry's turn for an elbow in the ribs; he'd let out an audible gasp.**

**Mr. Lucius Malfoy **

Scorpius groaned. His grandfather could only be there to make things a million times worse. And they were already bad enough.

**strode into Hagrid's hut, swathed in a long black traveling cloak, smiling a cold and satisfied smile. **

"This is very bad," James said. "Nothing good could make him smile."

"Sadly, that's really true," Scorpius mumbled.

**Fang started to growl.**

"**Already here, Fudge," he said approvingly. "Good, good . . ."**

"**What're you doin' here?" said Hagrid furiously. "Get outta my house!"**

"**My dear man, please believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your — er — d'you call this a house?" said Lucius Malfoy, sneering as he looked around the small cabin. **

James, Fred, and Lily all growled at the remark. Scorpius looked miserable and embarrassed again.

"**I simply called at the school and was told that the headmaster was here."**

"**And what exactly did you want with me, Lucius?" said Dumbledore. He spoke politely, but the fire was still blazing in his blue eyes.**

"If he can speak politely to my grandfather, he really is a saint," Scorpius said grimly.

"_**Dreadful **_**thing, Dumbledore," said Malfoy lazily, taking out a long roll of parchment, "but the governors feel it's time for you to step aside. **

"_What_?' nearly everyone chorused, stunned.

"They're not… really telling _Dumbledore _to get lost in the middle of something like this?" Rose said disbelievingly.

Teddy was rereading the sentence thinking he must have made a mistake. "This is unbelievable. _Unbelievable!_"

"They'll be dead meat if Dumbledore leaves!" Albus exclaimed.

" 'course that's exactly what dear Granddaddy wants, isn't it?" James growled, making Scorpius go a bit pink and stare fixedly at his hands.

Noticing this, Rose leaned over to mutter in his ear,"What'd I tell you when we were getting ice cream?"

He raised his head again and tried not to look too miserable as Teddy read on.

**This is an Order of Suspension — you'll find all twelve signatures on it. I'm afraid we feel you're losing your touch. How many attacks have there been now? Two more this afternoon, wasn't it? At this rate, there'll be no Muggle-borns left at Hogwarts, and we all know what an **_**awful **_**loss that would be to the school."**

"That –" James was too furious to speak. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing horrible enough for Lucius Malfoy and the things he was saying and the _way _he was saying them occurred to him.

"I know," Scorpius said in a low voice.

James nodded, the desperate need to communicate what exactly he thought about Scorpius's grandfather met.

"**Oh, now, see here, Lucius," said Fudge, looking alarmed, "Dumbledore suspended — no, no — last thing we want just now —"**

"Even _Fudge _knows that's the biggest half-arse move he could make right now," Teddy muttered through gritted teeth.

"**The appointment — or suspension — of the headmaster is a matter for the governors, Fudge," said Mr. Malfoy smoothly. "And as Dumbledore has failed to stop these attacks —"**

"**See here, Malfoy, if **_**Dumbledore **_**can't stop them," said Fudge, whose upper lip was sweating now, "I mean to say, who **_**can**_**?"**

"Exactly!" Teddy burst out. "This is the most transparent and underhanded political power-grab anyone could come up with!"

"Well, he's a proud member of Slytherin, isn't he?" Fred snarled.

"**That remains to be seen," said Mr. Malfoy with a nasty smile. "But as all twelve of us have voted —"**

**Hagrid leapt to his feet, his shaggy black head grazing the ceiling. "An' how many did yeh have ter threaten an' blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?" he roared.**

"Hear, hear!" Fred and James cried together.

"**Dear, dear, you know, that temper of yours will lead you into trouble one of these days, Hagrid," said Mr. Malfoy. "I would advise you not to shout at the Azkaban guards like that. They won't like it at all."**

"Bastard," Fred muttered furiously under his breath. If there was one thing he really hated it was the guy who stood outside a grisly bear's cage and poked fun at the bear. He'd like to chuck guys like that _in _the cage and see how goddamn _witty _they were then. Dumbledore and Hagrid both would have the better of Lucius Malfoy if he didn't wait to strike when they were already shackled.

"**Yeh can' take Dumbledore!" yelled Hagrid, making Fang the boarhound cower and whimper in his basket. "Take him away, an' the Muggle-borns won' stand a chance! There'll be killin' next!"**

Hugo and Lily both let out little whimpers, sounding more like frightened puppies than ten-year-olds, and for a moment Teddy wondered what they were going to do when it did come to killings, because when the war started, it would be inevitable.

"**Calm yourself, Hagrid," said Dumbledore sharply. He looked at Lucius Malfoy.**

"**If the governors want my removal, Lucius, I shall of course step aside —"**

"**But —" stuttered Fudge.**

"_**No**_**!" growled Hagrid.**

**Dumbledore had not taken his bright blue eyes off Lucius Malfoy's cold gray ones.**

"**However," said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, "you will find that I willonly **_**truly **_**have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."**

"What does he mean by that?" Fred muttered.

Teddy had a vague idea, but he did not know how to place it into words.

**For a second, Harry was almost sure Dumbledore's eyes flickered toward the corner where he and Ron stood hidden.**

"He knows!" Albus said suddenly. "How does he know they're there?"

"Can he see through the cloak?" James wondered.

"I doubt it," Teddy said slowly. "He just probably knows them and knew they'd be riddling this out and probably would come down to Hagrid's. They always seem to be in the right place at the right time to overhear things like that."

"**Admirable sentiments," said Malfoy, bowing. "We shall all miss your — er — highly individual way of running things, Albus, and only hope that your successor will manage to prevent any — ah — **_**killins.**_**"**

"What an _arse_," James muttered.

**He strode to the cabin door, opened it, and bowed Dumbledore out. Fudge, fiddling with his bowler, waited for Hagrid to go ahead of him, but Hagrid stood his ground, took a deep breath, and said carefully, "If anyone wanted ter find out some **_**stuff, **_**all they'd have ter do would be ter follow the **_**spiders. **_**That'd lead 'em right! That's all I'm sayin'."**

"What?" Hugo gulped, looking white. "What've spiders got to do with anything?"

**Fudge stared at him in amazement.**

"**All right, I'm comin'," said Hagrid, pulling on his moleskin overcoat. But as he was about to follow Fudge through the door, he stopped again and said loudly, "An' someone'll need ter feed Fang while I'm away."**

"Not quite as smooth as Dumbledore, but effective," James smirked, although anger was sill clouding his face.

**The door banged shut and Ron pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.**

"**We're in trouble now," he said hoarsely. **

"No kidding," Fred said, and for once he really was not kidding.

"**No Dumbledore. They might as well close the school tonight. There'll be an attack a day with him gone."**

**Fang started howling, scratching at the closed door.**

Teddy closed the book, feeling, like the rest of them looked, as if they'd just flew out of a whirlwind. Hagrid, Dumbledore, and Hermione gone in one chapter. Things were not looking good.

"Mum," Hugo finally said, misery heavy in his voice.

"I know," Rose told him.

"How come we didn't know?" Hugo asked.

"Is that the sort of thing that would comfort your children?" Rose asked dully. "Telling them you were virtually put in a coma by some prejudice monster skulking around Hogwarts?"

"No, but it would've been better than finding out this way," Hugo muttered.

"I don't think they foresaw us reading about it," Rose sighed. "But now at least she's safe. I mean we don't have to worry about her. By the time they wake her up, Dad and Harry will have already gotten revenge on that monster."

"How do you know?" Hugo asked. "How do you know they'll always be able to win?"

"Because it's them," Rose said as if that explained everything. "They always win in the end, don't they?"

_Not always _Teddy thought, but he let them go on thinking that for a little longer. It was a nice comfort to have and he wished, sometimes, that he could still burry himself in that way of thinking.

"They took Hagrid to Azkaban!" Lily burst out suddenly, and Teddy was startled to see tears sparkling in her eyes. She had heard about Azkaban from James, all about how it used to be with Dementors and everything. The thought of Hagrid being locked up in there for something he hadn't even done made her chest ache.

"Hagrid's tough," Teddy tried to reassure her. "He can take it."

Lily sniffled and wiped furiously at her eyes. "I know," she said, setting jaw and letting fury replace the tears. "But it's not fair! It's awful!"

"Yeah," Teddy said sadly. "I think we'll have to read about a lot of things like that."

He wrapped an arm around the closest thing he had to a baby sister. She sagged against him and he rested his chin on the top of her head. If there was a reason for the world to be fair, it was Lily, he thought.


	13. Arogog

**Disclaimer: We don't own Harry Potter, but as of October, we might be able to own a digital copy of the books and 18,000 new words from the master herself! Pottermore is making us very excited! ;D**

**A/N: We're sorry it's been so long! Vacations got in the way! I can totally sympathize with Ron and Hugo in this chapter. I've got major arachnophobia. Like so bad that I have never watched the entirety of Chamber of Secrets because of this part in the movie. There's a scene where Harry and Ron walk off the frame and you can see long, slowly uncurling spider legs behind them and that's the part I always close my eyes and don't open them until their out of the forest again. Ugh. Hate spiders. So I wrote Hugo's reaction from experience. Oddly, I can read this part in the book just fine though now, as long as I don't think about it much. Not the first time though. I had nightmares about it. I had to Google how to spell Acromantula and I couldn't look at the rest of the screen for fear of seeing an eight-legged 'friend' there. *shudders*. But anyways…**

Chapter Fifteen

Aragog

They wanted to know what happened. They wanted to hear how the heir of Slytherin got what was coming to him and how everything was okay. But no one seemed to want to take up the now-battered book and give voice to the words.

The afternoon sun was sinking lower in the sky. Soon, the adults would be finishing with work and returning to the Burrow for another long dinner. Darkness would be settling over the house and every shadow and whisper would make them jump if they tried to read about the Chamber of Secrets. It was only a matter of time before someone got too suspicious and they were discovered. But still, no one seemed in any great hurry to keep reading.

The creak of the gate from the other side of the clump of trees that concealed them from the rest of the yard carried loudly to their quiet group. A moment later they heard voices, light bickering and laughter, and three people came into view, making their way across the chicken-scattered yard to the Burrow.

"Mum!" Hugo cried, leaping to his feet and dashing around the side of the shed towards his parents and his uncle.

Rose couldn't help herself. She scrambled up and followed her brother, eyes fixed on her mother. James, Albus, and Lily drifted to the gap between the trees and the shed, hovering half-hidden, close enough to satisfy themselves that Hermione was, in fact, perfectly fine. Teddy, Fred, and Scorpius would have liked to join them, but stayed put, not wanting to draw too much attention.

"Mum!" Hugo said again as he collided with his mother hard enough to knock the breath out of her, and wrapped his arms around her middle. He didn't care very much that he was acting like a little kid. It was too much of a relief to feel her warmth, hear her breathing.

"Hello, sweetheart," Hermione said slightly breathlessly, looking down at her son with a little bewilderment. "Everything alright?" she asked, running a hand through his vivid hair.

Hugo looked up and she thought she saw something like fear flickering in his blue eyes. But it was gone in a second as he shook his head.

"Just missed you," he mumbled as Rose caught up with him.

"He's being weird again," she told her parents and her uncle, rolling her eyes and pretending to be impatient. Trying not to stare at her mother's very-much-alive face and push away the image of her frozen like a statue.

"Rose," said Hermione with slight reprove. "Don't call your brother weird. It's perfectly fine to miss your mother." She dropped a kiss on the top of Hugo's head and looked into his face again, trying to find what was bothering him.

"Yeah, maybe when you're five," Rose muttered, grabbing Hugo by the arm and beginning to drag him away. She didn't like the way Harry was looking from them to his children hovering in the background, as if something was starting to make sense.

"What, no one misses me?" Ron asked in a mock-hurt voice as Rose dragged Hugo away.

Rose turned to roll her eyes at him over her shoulder, but dropped Hugo's arm and dashed back to give her father a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

"Of course we miss you, Dad," she said as though speaking to a small child.

Ron chuckled. "You get the attitude from your mother," he told her as she raced away again.

"What's going on with them?" Hermione wondered as the three of them turned back toward the house.

Ron shrugged. "Summer makes kids go crazy. Drunk on the freedom. I just stay out of their way until it wears off."

"No, it's something different," Harry said thoughtfully. "Lily did the same thing to me when I got home yesterday. And Teddy came to see me this morning… which reminds me," he said sharply, turning to Ron, "I've got a bone to pick with you and George about what you let slip around them."

"What d'you mean?" Ron asked, looking confused.

Harry glanced at Hermione, not eager to bring up what the Dursleys had done to him in front of her. He wasn't sure how much she knew, how much Ron had told her, and he dreaded the subject being dragged into the light again. He had made his peace with it all, but he doubted the rest had.

"I'll wait 'til George gets here," he said instead.

"So, what do you think they're doing?" Hermione asked again, glancing curiously toward the shed her children had disappeared behind.

"Well, I have a hunch…" Harry said quietly.

XxXxX

"Way to be inconspicuous," Fred said as Hugo plopped down beside him again.

"Sorry," Hugo said, reddening. "I just…"

"Yeah, yeah, I guess you're justified this time," Fred sighed, waving a hand. "But if you lot keep freaking out every time you see them, we'll be busted before you can say 'There's-no-bloody-way-we'll-ever-have-another-cha nce-to-know-the-whole-story-and-will-live-the-rest -of-our-lives-being-slowly-driven-mad-wondering-ho w-it-all-happened'.

"So we'll have time to finish all of these books twice, then," James said as Fred panted, wondering how in the world Aunt Hermione could talk like that all the time.

"I guess I can read," Albus said reluctantly, wondering what he would have to describe in this chapter.

Teddy tossed the book towards him and he flipped to the next chapter.

"I don't think you're gonna like this one much, Hue," Albus told his little cousin as he examined the picture above the chapter title.

"They follow the spiders, don't they?" Hugo groaned.

"Of course they do," Rose sighed.

"Well, it's the only lead they've got," James pointed out. "Do you want them to figure everything out or not?"

"I suppose…"

James leaned over and whispered to Fred, eyes still on Rose, who was staring blankly at a leaf she was twirling in her fingers, "Did she just agree with me? About rule-breaking and dangerous situations?"

"I think – I think she did, mate," Fred whispered back, goggling at his cousin.

"Damn. I knew I should have invested in microscopic recording devices to be implanted in my skull. Now this moment will be lost and no one will believe me!"

Albus had started reading.

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Aragog**

"Er, what?" Fred asked.

"Aragog," Albus repeated. "Sounds like a name."

"The name of a spider-haven?" Hugo asked nervously.

Albus gave him a sympathetic look before he started the chapter. After all, he knew what it was like to have to read about something that made your insides squirm as if they wanted to come out. Snakes. He very much hoped that Hagrid gave instructions to follow them.

**Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn't look right to Harry; **

"That wouldn't be Hogwarts," James said, picturing the emptiness of that scene.

**no better, in fact, than the inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong.**

"No kidding," Hugo mumbled.

**Harry and Ron had tried to visit Hermione, but visitors were now barred from the hospital wing.**

"She couldn't even have visitors?" Hugo said, wide-eyed again. Suppose she'd been aware of everything happening around her? It would have been at least some comfort to hear familiar voices once in a while. It would be terribly lonely and scary to simply lie there, all alone, for who knew how long.

"Why couldn't she have visitors?" Rose asked indignantly.

Albus kept reading for answer.

"**We're taking no more chances," Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the infirmary door. "No, I'm sorry, there's every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off. . . ."**

Hugo paled, Albus gulped, and the rest looked very uneasy. They hadn't thought of that. They'd assumed that once someone was petrified, they were out of play.

"I guess it's good they're taking precautions, then," Rose mumbled.

"But Mum…" Hugo said sadly, trailing off.

**With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before, **

"I'll say," James said, anger creeping back into his voice. "Lucius Malfoy just gave the heir free reign!"

Albus read over him.

**so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn't look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.**

Fred and James shuddered at the thought of Hogwarts like that. The castle they knew had battle scars, but this fear was something entirely different. It wasn't really Hogwarts anymore….

It was hard for James to explain why exactly this seemed like such a devastation. He knew the school didn't close, that it would eventually recover. But Hogwarts… it was more than just a school, especially to his parents. It was bursting with life and magic and mischief, a place where four very different boys had once become a family against all odds, where three unwitting eleven-year-olds had formed a friendship that would save the world. It was where lonely children could find homes and scared children could find bravery, and most people could find a places in the world. And to see it like this, choked by fear and darkness and _hate_, it was like watching something dying.

**Harry constantly repeated Dumbledore's final words to himself. "**_**I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to**__**me. **_**. . . **_**Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for**__**it.**_**" **

"Now if only we had a clue what to do with that," Rose said, frustrated.

**But what good were these words? Who exactly were they supposed to ask for help, when everyone was just as confused and scared as they were?**

"Exactly," Fred muttered. "He was too brilliant to be understood, or he was just cracked."

"I think it was the first," Teddy told him. "But either way, it's not a lot of help, is it?"

**Hagrid's hint about the spiders was far easier to understand —**

Hugo gulped, wishing Hagrid had been a bit more cryptic. Then it might take them longer to figure it out.

**the trouble was, there didn't seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow. **

"Good, exactly. Best just to give it up and look for another lead," Hugo said, voice slightly higher than usual.

"Somehow I don't see Dad doing that, mate," James said to Hugo.

Hugo grimaced. He knew it all too well.

**Harry looked everywhere he went, helped (rather reluctantly) by Ron. They were hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren't allowed to wander off on their own but had to move around the castle in a pack with the other Gryffindors. Most of their fellow students seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by teachers, but Harry found it very irksome.**

"Well, it is rather difficult to go snooping that way," Fred said sympathetically.

"I wonder how much more quickly the Chamber would be closed if none of the teachers were trying to 'shepherd' Dad and Ron," James mused.

"Yes, what are the teachers thinking, imposing all those irksome safety measures," Teddy said, lip twitching.

"Exactly," Fred and James said together.

"Rules don't stop anything, they just get in the way," Fred said exasperatedly.

**One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of terror and suspicion. Draco Malfoy **

"Of course," Scorpius muttered. Why did this not surprise him anymore?

Albus gave him an apologetic look over the top of the book.

**was strutting around the school as though he had just been appointed Head Boy.**

" 'Course," James muttered bitterly. "His _daddy_ just got Dumbledore kicked out. Not only are all the Muggle-borns practically free game, but now he virtually has the school in his pocket. It's like Christmas. From Hell."

**Harry didn't realize what he was so pleased about until the Potions lesson about two weeks after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when, sitting right behind Malfoy, Harry overheard him gloating to Crabbe and Goyle.**

"**I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore," he said, not troubling to keep his voice down. "I told you he thinks Dumbledore's the worst headmaster the school's ever had. Maybe we'll get a decent headmaster now. Someone who won't **_**want **_**the Chamber of Secrets closed. **

"So a sick, sick, bast –"

"Fred!"

"Come on, Rosie, just let me say it once!"

**McGonagall won't last long, **

"Yeah she will," James snorted. "She'll probably be around for _our _kids. I mean, if she can survive Marauders, Dad, Ron and Hermione, _and _us, she must be, like, immortal."

"Well, she hasn't survived you yet," Teddy reminded him. "You lot might just really drive her mad."

"We've had a good go already," Scorpius whispered to his friends, remembering particularly their first month of school.

"Just wait 'til Lily gets to school," Albus whispered back. "She's the one you've got to watch."

**she's only filling in. . . ."**

**Snape swept past Harry, making no comment about Hermione's empty seat and cauldron.**

Dark looks crossed most faces, and where there weren't dark looks there were pained expressions.

"**Sir," said Malfoy loudly. "Sir, why don't **_**you **_**apply for the headmaster's job?"**

"Now _that _would be hell," James said under his breath so as not to evoke a scolding from Rose.

"**Now, now, Malfoy," said Snape, though he couldn't suppress a thin-lipped smile. "Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I daresay he'll be back with us soon enough."**

"**Yeah, right," said Malfoy, smirking. "I expect you'd have Father's vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job — **_**I'll **_**tell Father you're the best teacher here, sir —"**

"Painfully obvious suck-up!" James coughed into his hand.

**Snape smirked as he swept off around the dungeon, fortunately not spotting Seamus Finnigan, who was pretending to vomit into his cauldron.**

Fred and James snickered.

"I like this Seamus kid," Fred grinned. "He's got the right idea."

"**I'm quite surprised the Mudbloods haven't all packed their bags by now," Malfoy went on. **

There was some hissing at the use of the word Mudblood.

"Arrogant prick," Fred muttered.

And Scorpius couldn't help but agree whole-heartedly.

"**Bet you five Galleons the next one dies.**

"That's a terrible thing to say!" Lily gasped, outraged.

Scorpius felt his stomach turning to lead again. He just couldn't believe that his father had been this… eager for a someone – a kid – to die. It didn't matter what the others said about him being young and brainwashed and not knowing what he was saying. Scorpius was twelve right now, the same age as his father, and he couldn't imagine actually hoping for someone to die, no matter how he might feel about them.

Then he noticed that Albus had gone rather white. His lips trembled as he forced out the next words.

**Pity it wasn't Granger —"**

Fred and James snarled, furious looks on their faces. Lily looked slightly sick. Hugo was biting his lip hard, and Teddy looked suddenly grave. Rose was shredding grass, her expression blank.

Scorpius scooted a little away from her, feeling miserable and sorry, even though Rose and Albus had both told him he shouldn't be. He couldn't help it. He didn't blame Rose if she couldn't even look at him, just because he looked so much like the boy who seemed to have spent half the school year hoping her mother would die.

Teddy grimaced. He hated hearing how twisted Draco and kids like him had been. How bloodthirsty they had been bred. He doubted, when it came to it, that Draco Malfoy would really want an innocent girl dead. But it was an evil thought all the same. It must have been something huge and probably terrible to slap him in the right direction. He looked over at Scorpius, who was, once again, looking miserable, and wondered how he would take whatever that slap was.

**The bell rang at that moment, which was lucky; at Malfoy's last words, Ron had leapt off his stool, and in the scramble to collect bags and books, his attempts to reach Malfoy went unnoticed.**

"Now _that's _a pity," Fred said darkly. "Wish Uncle Ron could've gotten a hold of him…"

"**Let me at him," Ron growled as Harry and Dean hung onto his arms. "I don't care, I don't need my wand, I'm going to kill him with my bare hands —"**

"Go Ron," James said emphatically, but he was glaring too much for it to be a cheer.

Hugo was generally a mellow person, but he could sympathize with his father at this moment.

"I think your dad got saved by the bell," Rose said to Scorpius. He couldn't read the emotion behind her words, but he thought he saw a flash of barely-restrained fury and disgust in her face.

"**Hurry up, I've got to take you all to Herbology," barked Snape over the class's heads, and off they marched, with Harry, Ron, and Dean bringing up the rear, Ron still trying to get loose. It was only safe to let go of him when Snape had seen them out of the castle and they were making their way across the vegetable patch toward the greenhouses.**

"Wish Uncle Ron had punched him good and hard in the jaw," Fred growled. "Maybe that would have fixed his mouth."

**The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing from their number, Justin and Hermione.**

**Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian Shrivelfigs. Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap and found himself face-to-face with Ernie Macmillan.**

"If tries to pin _this _one on Dad, I might have to send him something nasty from the joke shop," James said darkly.

**Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, "I just want to say, Harry, that I'm sorry I ever suspected you. **

"Well, about time!" Lily exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's a good thing he finally caught up for his sake," James agreed with a wicked smile.

"He's not a bad guy," Teddy defended. "He can be a bit… much sometimes, but he knows how to humble himself."

"Apology or not, _I _don't like him very much," Lily sniffed. "He helped turn the whole school against Dad!"

"Well, his friend got attacked," Albus reminded his sister. "What would you do if Hugo got petrified?"

Hugo gulped loudly, and Lily paled a little at the thought of that, but didn't lose her indignation. "I _wouldn't _make someone a scraped goat."

"Scapegoat," Teddy whispered.

"Yes, that."

Albus rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying it wasn't as if this Ernie bloke was doing it for kicks. Now be quiet so I can read the rest of his apology."

**I know you'd never attack Hermione Granger, and I apologize for all the stuff I said. We're all in the same boat now, and, well —"**

**He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.**

"He's lucky Dad's a _really _forgiving sort of person," said James.

"I think we're all lucky for that," Teddy commented. He nudged Lily in the side. "You know, Lily-bud, if your dad can get over it, I think you can, too."

Lily only crossed her arms, the beginnings of teenage defiance making themselves very evident in her ten-year-old face.

**Ernie and his friend Hannah **

"Hannah!" Teddy, James, and Hugo all chorused, grinning.

"See?" Teddy said to Lily. "He was friends with Hannah! Still is, I think. He can't be too bad if she keeps him around."

Lily's expression softened ever so slightly. She adored Hannah.

**came to work at the same Shrivelfig as Harry and Ron.**

"**That Draco Malfoy character," said Ernie, breaking off dead twigs, "he seems very pleased about all this, doesn't he? D'you know, I think **_**he **_**might be Slytherin's heir."**

"Now there's an idea!" James exclaimed excitedly.

"Better check into that one right away," Fred added, sniggering.

"Just because not everyone is brewing illegal potions to interrogate classmates doesn't mean we should make fun of them," Rose told them, but her lips were twitching.

"**That's clever of you," said Ron, who didn't seem to have forgiven Ernie as readily as Harry.**

Lily gave Teddy a see-what-I-mean? sort of look.

"It's in Ron's job description as best mate to resent all the people who are gits to his friends, it doesn't count," Teddy told her.

"**Do you think it's Malfoy, Harry?" Ernie asked.**

"Not anymore," James said, rolling his eyes.

"Old news, mate," Fred told the book.

"**No," said Harry, so firmly that Ernie and Hannah stared.**

**A second later, Harry spotted something. Several large spiders were scuttling over the ground on the other side of the glass, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting. **

Hugo swallowed, breathing a little too quickly. Here it came.

"That's odd," Scorpius noted. "Why would spiders move like that?"

"Why did Hagrid tell them to follow siders in the first place?" James shrugged.

"His pet was a spider," Teddy reminded them, wincing as he saw Hugo shake his head a little at the thought. "Maybe it knew something."

"And how exactly is it going to tell Dad?" James scoffed. "Spin out clues in its web? Assuming it survived the last fifty years."

"It sounded like it was pretty big," said Teddy. "Acromantulas live a long time and are highly intelligent."

"They're also man-eating," Rose added, alarmed. "Not even Hagrid would send two kids hunting an Acrumantula! They'd get killed!"

Hugo had broken out into a sweat, biting his lip. Lily watched him with concern.

"Maybe it's tamed," Teddy said hopefully.

**Harry hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears.**

"_**Ouch**_**! What're you —"**

**Harry pointed out the spiders, following their progress with his eyes screwed up against the sun.**

"How did he even see them in the first place?" Fred marveled.

"He's a seeker," Albus reminded Fred, grinning.

"**Oh, yeah," said Ron, trying, and failing, to look pleased. "But we can't follow them now —"**

**Ernie and Hannah were listening curiously.**

"Probably didn't help Ernie's opinion of Dad's mental state," James snickered. "At least he'll just think he's weird now, and not dangerous."

**Harry's eyes narrowed as he focused on the spiders. If they pursued their fixed course, there could be no doubt about where they would end up.**

"**Looks like they're heading for the Forbidden Forest. . . ."**

"Where else would vicious man-eating arachnids live?" Rose asked, throwing up her hands.

"I hear the jungles of Borneo are lovely," Fred suggested pleasantly.

**And Ron looked even unhappier about that.**

"A sane person would be," Rose muttered, starting to get nervous again. She had a nasty feeling her father and uncle were about to run headlong into the most dangerous situation they could possibly find.

**At the end of the lesson Professor Sprout escorted the class to their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Harry and Ron lagged behind the others so they could talk out of earshot.**

"**We'll have to use the Invisibility Cloak again," Harry told Ron. "We can take Fang with us. He's used to going into the forest with Hagrid, he might be some help."**

"If he's anything like Saber, I think he'll be more afraid of the forest than the forest will be of him," said James.

"**Right," said Ron, who was twirling his wand nervously in his fingers. "Er — aren't there — aren't there supposed to be werewolves in the forest?" he added as they took their usual places at the back of Lockhart's classroom.**

"Is it a full moon?" Teddy asked, rolling his eyes. He couldn't help but feel a twinge of annoyance at this rumor, which hadn't seemed to have been assuaged when _he _started school.

**Preferring not to answer that question, Harry said, "There are good things in there, too. The centaurs are all right, and the unicorns. . ."**

**Ron had never been into the Forbidden Forest before. Harry had entered it only once and had hoped never to do so again.**

"I think that was a bit too much to ask, considering his chosen line of work at school," said Fred. "Resident Mystery Solver screams for forays into the forbidden _anythings_, from corridors to entire forests and everything in between."

**Lockhart bounded into the room and the class stared at him. Every other teacher in the place was looking grimmer than usual, but Lockhart appeared nothing short of buoyant.**

"Nutter," James muttered, shaking his head. "His head must have finally inflated so much that it cracked."

"**Come now," he cried, beaming around him. "Why all these long faces?"**

"Well, students are being hunted down, the only one who most people believe could put a stop to it has been suspended, an innocent man has been arrested, and the school might be shut down," Fred reeled off dismally. "It tends to put a damper on things."

**People swapped exasperated looks, but nobody answered.**

"**Don't you people realize," said Lockhart, speaking slowly, as though they were all a bit dim, "the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away —"**

"No he hasn't!" several people said loudly and indignantly.

"**Says who?" said Dean Thomas loudly.**

"**My dear young man, the Minister of Magic wouldn't have taken Hagrid if he hadn't been one hundred percent sure that he was guilty," said Lockhart, in the tone of someone explaining that one and one made two.**

"Of course he would," Rose said with disgust. "If it made him look better."

"**Oh, yes he would," said Ron, even more loudly than Dean.**

"**I flatter myself I know a **_**touch **_**more about Hagrid's arrest than you do, Mr. Weasley," said Lockhart in a self-satisfied tone.**

"I really can't take anymore smarmy git," James complained, gaging at Lockhart's self-important delusions.

**Ron started to say that he didn't think so, somehow, but stopped in midsentence when Harry kicked him hard under the desk.**

"**We weren't there, remember?" Harry muttered.**

**But Lockhart's disgusting cheeriness, his hints that he had always thought Hagrid was no good, **

There were some growls from Fred and James and glowers from most of the rest at these insinuations.

**his confidence that the whole business was now at an end, irritated Harry so much that he yearned to throw **_**Gadding with Ghouls **_**right in Lockhart's stupid face. **

"Oh, _please _do it, Dad!" James begged, imagining the scene with relish.

**Instead he contented himself with scrawling a note to Ron: **_**Let's do it tonight.**_

"Finding giant, man-eating spiders is not even close to a good substitute," James complained as Hugo started biting his lip again.

**Ron read the message, swallowed hard, and looked sideways at the empty seat usually filled by Hermione. The sight seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he nodded.**

Teddy smiled faintly. Ron was willing to walk into his greatest fear for Hermione.

"He must have really _really _cared about Mum," Hugo mumbled, feeling slightly sick at the prospect of even reading about these things, much less coming face-to-face with them.

**The Gryffindor common room was always very crowded these days, because from six o'clock onward the Gryffindors had nowhere else to go. **

"That would be dead boring," said Fred fervently.

"Bet the Reavenclaws are going out of their minds," James snickered. "Not being able to go to the library."

"No, they're probably just starving," Fred contradicted. "Having to skip meals and all to get their research fix without breaking the rules."

"You know, you two are becoming dangerously stereotypical," Teddy commented.

**They also had plenty to talk about, with the result that the common room often didn't empty until past midnight.**

**Harry went to get the Invisibility Cloak out of his trunk right after dinner, and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the room to clear. Fred and George challenged Harry and Ron to a few games of Exploding Snap, and Ginny sat watching them, very subdued in Hermione's usual chair. **

"Bet Mum getting attacked was hard on her," Hugo mumbled.

**Harry and Ron kept losing on purpose, trying to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight when Fred, George, and Ginny finally went to bed.**

**Harry and Ron waited for the distant sounds of two dormitory doors closing before seizing the cloak, throwing it over themselves, and climbing through the portrait hole.**

**It was another difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the teachers. At last they reached the entrance hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.**

"I feel like having doors that can be easily unlocked from the inside is a bit dangerous," Scorpius noted, thinking about the heavy protection the castle still had now.

" '**Course," said Ron abruptly as they strode across the black grass, "we might get to the forest and find there's nothing to follow. Those spiders might not've been going there at all. I know it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but . . ." His voice trailed away hopefully.**

"I don't think your luck swings that way, mate," Teddy smiled ruefully.

"Wishful thinking," Hugo sighed.

**They reached Hagrid's house, sad and sorry-looking with its blank windows. When Harry pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy at the sight of them. **

"Poor thing's probably going mad with lonesomeness," Lily cooed sympathetically.

**Worried he might wake everyone at the castle with his deep, booming barks, they hastily fed him treacle toffee from a tin on the mantelpiece, **

"Animal cruelty," Fred said in mock-outrage. "Not even Fang – especially not Fang – deserves Hagrid's month-old cooking."

**which glued his teeth together.**

"See?"

**Harry left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid's table. There would be no need for it in the pitch-dark forest.**

James was thinking this was probably a good idea because the cloak would just get lost or torn up in the forest, but Rose was thinking it would have been useful if they met some fearsome beast, which, given their mission, was practically guaranteed.

"**C'mon, Fang, we're going for a walk," said Harry, patting his leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the edge of the forest, and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.**

"Poor sap doesn't know what he's in for," James sighed, shaking his head sadly.

"To be fair, your Dad lured him out of the house under false pretenses," Fred pointed out. "I mean, _a walk_?" he went on incredulously. "I guess technically they are walking, but you don't call jumping into shark-infested waters 'going for a swim'."

**Harry took out his wand, murmured, "**_**Lumos**_**!" and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.**

"**Good thinking," said Ron. "I'd light mine, too, but you know — it'd probably blow up or something. . . ."**

"And what exactly does he plan on doing if they run into trouble?" Rose asked in a tense whisper.

Teddy looked nervous, too. You didn't go on a mission with one malfunctioning wand. Not only was Ron vulnerable, but Harry wasn't covered and he'd be distracted trying to keep an eye out for Ron. It was beyond risky. Especially since he doubted either one had a clue what they were going to find when they got to wherever the spiders were going.

**Harry tapped Ron on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.**

"**Okay," Ron sighed as though resigned to the worst, "I'm ready. Let's go."**

"I'm not," Hugo mumbled, keeping his eyes fixed on his knee and trying to convince himself that it was just words and words couldn't hurt him… or crawl all over his skin with long hairy legs –

He cut off that thought.

**So, with Fang scampering around them, sniffing tree roots and leaves, they entered the forest. By the glow of Harry's wand, they followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. They walked behind them for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Harry's wand shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.**

"Not good, not good," Rose muttered, twisting her fingers together worriedly.

"Even I'm gonna say this seems like a bad idea," James announced.

"That means they _really _shouldn't do it," Albus said anxiously.

"Can't hardly turn back now," Fred said ruefully.

Teddy grimaced. This was just getting worse.

**Harry paused, trying to see where the spiders were going, but everything outside his little sphere of light was pitch-black. He had never been this deep into the forest before. He could vividly remember Hagrid advising him not to leave the forest path last time he'd been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, **

Lily bit her lip and Teddy grimaced even more at the reminder.

**and he had also said to follow the spiders.**

"Better just go for it," James said pensively. "They've already come this far."

"But you just admitted it was a bad plan," Albus reminded his brother, exasperated.

James shrugged. "Sometimes they're the best you've got. What if they find a way into the Chamber and stop all this?"

"What if they get mauled by some wild animal?"

"Won't know unless they follow the spiders," James shrugged again. "Dumbledore's _gone _Al. Even if he was working on stopping this, he can't do anything anymore. It's all down to Dad and Ron now, and this is all they've got."

**Something wet touched Harry's hand and he jumped backward, crushing Ron's foot, but it was only Fang's nose.**

Hugo had jumped too, and Fred and James snickered at him.

"**What d'you reckon?" Harry said to Ron, whose eyes he could just make out, reflecting the light from his wand.**

"**We've come this far," said Ron.**

Despite the ever-building tension, Teddy couldn't help but smile a little bit. It reminded him of countless exchanges he'd heard between the two of them at work now. Some things never changed.

**So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn't move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness. Harry could feel Fang's hot breath on his hand. More than once, they had to stop, so that Harry could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.**

"That wouldn't be good if they lost the trail in the middle of the forest," James said uneasily.

"I dunno," Hugo squeaked. "I don't think it would the worst thing in the world."

"I just thought of something," said Albus suddenly. "How are they going to find their way _out_?"

"That's assuming they get away from the bloodthirsty spider," James said darkly.

"They get away, James," Lily snapped at her brother because the whole thing was beginning to scare her too. "They're both fine."

"_Now_," James reminded her. "Doesn't stop them from being _nearly _killed or wondering around in the forest for ages getting nice and scarred up."

"They're good," Teddy assured the rest, even though he was thinking the same thing as James.

**They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, they noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the trees were as thick as ever.**

**Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making both Harry and Ron jump out of their skins.**

"**What?" said Ron loudly, looking around into the pitch-dark, and gripping Harry's elbow very hard.**

"**There's something moving over there," Harry breathed. "Listen. . . sounds like something big. . . ."**

No one said a word, holding their breath. Hugo had started to rock back and forth slightly, trying to focus just on Al's voice and not the things he was describing, sure this was where the monstrous, hairy, eight-legged thing would come in.

**They listened. Some distance to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.**

"**Oh, no," said Ron. "Oh, no, oh, no, oh —"**

This would usually be the part where Rose started chanting, but she left it to her father this time, tearing up grass instead.

"**Shut up," said Harry frantically. "It'll hear you."**

"**Hear **_**me**_**?" said Ron in an unnaturally high voice. "It's already heard Fang!"**

**The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. **

"Why are they just standing there?" Scorpius couldn't help but ask, the tension pressing on all of them.

Albus kept reading before anyone could answer. He wanted to know what was going to happen.

**There was a strange rumbling noise and then silence.**

"Please be something friendly, please be something friendly," James pleaded, squeezing his eyes shut and crossing his fingers.

"Spiders don't rumble, right?" Hugo asked in soprano. "Not even really big ones?"

"Not that I've heard of," Teddy assured him, frowning as he tried to think of what the big something could be. He was with James on this one, _please let it not want to kill them._

"**What d'you think it's doing?" said Harry.**

"**Probably getting ready to pounce," said Ron.**

**They waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.**

"**D'you think it's gone?" Harry whispered.**

"That could work too," James negotiated. "Just as long as it doesn't pounce."

"**Dunno —"**

**Then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that both of them flung up their hands to shield their eyes. **

"What on earth is it?" Rose half-squealed.

"I'd tell you if stopped interrupting," Albus burst out in frustration.

**Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.**

"That's not telling us, Al," James complained.

"What rumbles and has lights?" Fred wondered. Then a wide grin broke out on his face as he remembered something that fit that description rumbling off towards the forest, but Albus was already reading.

"**Harry!" Ron shouted, his voice breaking with relief. "Harry, it's our car!"**

"YES!" the entire flying-Ford-Anglia fan club shouted, punching the air.

Fred and James high-fived and even Rose joined in on the whooping because it actually _was _something friendly.

"I don't believe it!" Fred exclaimed gleefully. "It's still alive! We've _got _to go looking for it now!"

"Don't even think about it," Teddy warned, but he was grinning too.

"I wonder if Granddad ever found out it was still driving around in the forest," James mused. "Maybe _he _waged a rescue mission."

"I don't think Ron would risk telling his dad about this little adventure," said Teddy.

James looked disappointed.

"_**What**_**?"**

"**Come on!"**

**Harry blundered after Ron toward the light, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had emerged into a clearing. Mr. Weasley's car was standing, empty, in the middle of a circle of thick trees under a roof of dense branches, its headlights ablaze.**

**As Ron walked, openmouthed, toward it, it moved slowly toward him, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.**

"It even recognizes people!" Fred said excitedly.

"You'd recognize the idiots that crashed you into a fighting tree," Lily pointed out.

Her cousin waved a hand as if to say that wasn't important. "The car doesn't seem to upset by that little detail."

"**It's been here all the time!" said Ron delightedly, walking around the car. "Look at it. The forest's turned it wild. . . ."**

**The sides of the car were scratched and smeared with mud. Apparently it had taken to trundling around the forest on its own.**

"Wicked," James, Fred, and Hugo all breathed.

"Not only is it a _flying _car, it's a _feral _flying car," James said as if nothing in the world could beat that on his awesomeness-scale.

**Fang didn't seem at all keen on it; he kept close to Harry, who could feel him quivering. His breathing slowing down again, Harry stuffed his wand back into his robes.**

Teddy groaned. "Harry! That's like the first thing teach you! That's like the first thing _you _teach us! Never put your wand away until the mission is finished and you're completely out of any risk of danger."

"**And we thought it was going to attack us!" said Ron, leaning against the car and patting it. "I wondered where it had gone!"**

"So do we," Fred sighed.

**Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.**

"It's a sign," Hugo said, having forgetting his growing fear momentarily with the appearance of the car, but it came back with the mention of spiders. "Just get in the car and it'll take you back to school and you can forget all about spiders."

"**We've lost the trail," he said. "C'mon, let's go and find them."**

**Ron didn't speak. He didn't move. **

And the relief and illusion of safety the appearance of the car had brought with it was gone. Hugo was white as a ghost and every eye was fixed on the book in Al's hands.

**His eyes were fixed on a point some ten feet above the forest floor, right behind Harry. His face was livid with terror.**

Teddy swore very quietly. There was no doubt in any of their minds that this time it really was a giant, bloodthirsty spider. Albus's voice shook ever so slightly as he read what happened next.

**Harry didn't even have time to turn around. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was hanging facedown.**

Hugo jumped to his feet. His white face was tinged with green and he looked about to be sick. He had tried to stay sitting there listening as long as he could, tried to tell himself it was just a book and he could handle it, but he could _feel _that long hairy something wrapping around his own middle.

Teddy stood up too, wand ready to conjure a bowl in case Hugo really was about to be sick. The rest were watching him worriedly.

"I can't," Hugo squeaked. "I thought I could, but I can't! If it gets much worse I'll be sick!"

"Easy," Teddy said soothingly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "That's fine. I'll walk you up to the house or out to the orchard or something. We'll come and get you when it's over."

Hugo nodded, not looking at any of them, and darted around the shed, Teddy right behind him. He kept his head down as they made their way towards the house.

"It's okay," Teddy told him again, looking down at the top of his head. "It's a phobia. Like Al and snakes. We all get it."

"I'm never going to be in Gryffindor," Hugo muttered miserably. "It's stupid! Rose always tells me they can't hurt me, but I can't even read about them!"

"Just because you're afraid of things doesn't mean you aren't brave," Teddy told him.

"Yeah, but aren't I supposed to, like, face my fears or something? All I do is run away," Hugo kicked at the ground.

"So you'll face them some other time," Teddy said, shrugging. "It doesn't make you any less Gryffindor."

Hugo privately thought it did, but Teddy was trying to cheer him up, so he nodded, trying to look less glum.

"Fred and James'll think I'm a wimp, though," he groaned. "They make fun of Al for being afraid of snakes all the time."

"They shouldn't," Teddy said, frowning. "But they're teenaged gits and Al's James's little brother. I'll make sure they lay off you."

Hugo nodded his thanks. They had reached the house. Teddy clapped Hugo on the shoulder, smiled reassuringly, and loped back off to the shed. Hugo slipped through the back door and found his mother at the kitchen table, talking to his grandmother. He looked better than he had just a minute ago, but Hermione's eyes still filled with concern when she saw him.

"Sweetheart, what _is _the matter?" she asked as he slipped into a chair next to her.

Hugo hesitated, then mumbled "Spiders."

His mother and grandmother exchanged knowing looks, and Hermione sighed, running a hand through his hair. "You are your father's son."

XxXxX

"Is Hugo okay?" Lily asked the moment Teddy dropped down beside her.

"He's fine," Teddy assured them, waving a hand. "But you lot" – he looked at Fred and James – "aren't to give him a hard time."

"Yeah, yeah, Rosie already gave us the lecture," Fred said impatiently, "We won't bother him about it. We aren't _mean_."

"Come on, Al! Read! Dad just got picked up by a giant spider!" James commanded his brother.

And they all leaned in, listening hard as Albus read on.

**Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking, and saw Ron's legs leave the ground, too, heard Fang whimpering and howling — next moment, he was being swept away into the dark trees.**

"This is very, very, very bad," Rose whispered, eyes wide.

"No kidding," Scorpius agreed.

"How the hell did they get out of _this_ one?" Fred asked.

"Maybe the car'll save 'em," James suggested half-heartedly, biting his lip.

**Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. **

Lily was not the only one to shudder at this image.

"It's a good thing Hue's out of here," said Rose. "He'd be having nightmares for weeks."

**Behind him, he could hear another of the creatures, no doubt carrying Ron. **

"Hang on, there're more than one?" Albus asked, looking up from the book in horror.

Teddy nodded slowly. "I guess there isn't much else to do in fifty years but bread."

"I'm never going near the Forbidden Forest," Scorpius said fervently as he imagined a long hairy leg reaching out of the trees to snatch him. "Never."

"I'm with you," Albus agreed, returning to the book.

**They were moving into the very heart of the forest. Harry could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but Harry couldn't have yelled even if he had wanted to; he seemed to have left his voice back with the car in the clearing.**

**He never knew how long he was in the creature's clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning his neck sideways, he realized that they had reached the ridge of a vast hollow, a hollow that had been cleared of trees, so that the stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever laid eyes on.**

Lily gulped and wriggled closer to Teddy out of habit. No one seemed to be able to speak either as they listened to a description that would have had Hugo running for the hills if he hadn't already taken off.

**Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. **

Lily buried her face in her knees. Albus shuddered. Fred fixed his eyes on a fat brown spider sitting placidly in its web at the corner of the shed's roof and tried to imagine it as big as the _shed_. He could understand, in that minute, why Hugo was so freaked out. It was enough to make him think about joining Scopius and Al's pact of never going near the forest.

**The massive specimen that was carrying Harry made its way down the steep slope toward a misty, domed web in the very center of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.**

Teddy licked his lips. This was a grisly nightmare. He couldn't believe that it had actually _happened _to Harry and Ron. When they were _twelve_. It was starting to freak him out just hearing about it. He had no idea how they planned on getting out of this alive. Then he remembered that they didn't plan.

**Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him.**

"To the spider-covered ground," Lily said, imagining the little beasts swarming up Harry's arms, covering him. She squirmed, rubbing her hands over her bare arms as if trying to rub the imaginary spiders off.

**Ron and Fang thudded down next to him. Fang wasn't howling anymore, but cowering silently on the spot. Ron looked exactly like Harry felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping.**

"Can't blame him," James muttered, thinking briefly of what _he _would look like if he were there. Probably a lot worse.

**Harry suddenly realized that the spider that had dropped him was saying something. **

"What? It can talk?" James burst out.

Rose just nodded.

**It had been hard to tell, because he clicked his pincers with every word he spoke.**

"**Aragog!" it called. "Aragog!"**

"Must be the leader," Rose mumbled.

**And from the middle of the misty, domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was gray in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.**

"That must be Hagrid's pet from the diary," James realized. "And I guess it _can _tell them what it knows, if it can talk."

"Yeah, I'm sure it'll give 'em all the answers they're looking for before it _eats _them!" Fred exclaimed.

"Well, they don't get eaten, so it must be worth it," Albus tried to point out optimistically.

"Maybe they do. Maybe Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron really are polyjuice doubles or something, because it doesn't look like they're getting out of this one," Fred said wildly.

"**What is it?" he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.**

"**Men," clicked the spider who had caught Harry.**

"**Is it Hagrid?" said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.**

"**Strangers," clicked the spider who had brought Ron.**

"**Kill them," clicked Aragog fretfully. "I was sleeping. . . ."**

"Really hospitable isn't he?" Fred tried to joke, but nobody laughed.

"**We're friends of Hagrid's," Harry shouted. His heart seemed to have left his chest to pound in his throat.**

_**Click, click, click **_**went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.**

**Aragog paused.**

"**Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said slowly.**

"**Hagrid's in trouble," said Harry, breathing very fast. "That's why we've come."**

"**In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. **

"He cares about Hagrid," Lily said, unable to muster any bit of fondness for the spider, but thinking it was kind of nice all the same.

"And hopefully that will keep Harry and Ron in one piece," Teddy said nervously.

"**But why has he sent you?"**

**Harry thought of getting to his feet but decided against it; he didn't think his legs would support him. So he spoke from the ground, as calmly as he could.**

"**They think, up at the school, that Hagrid's been setting a — a — something on students. They've taken him to Azkaban."**

**Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders; it was like applause, except applause didn't usually make Harry feel sick with fear.**

Lily, Rose, and Scorpius all shivered at the thought.

"**But that was years ago," said Aragog fretfully. "Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that **_**I **_**was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."**

"**And you . . . you didn't come from the Chamber of Secrets?" said Harry, who could feel cold sweat on his forehead.**

"Obviously," James said, voice cracking a little. He didn't think he had ever heard of his father being this afraid, even face-to-face with Voldemort at the end of the last book. It was starting to infect him with fear too.

"**I!" said Aragog, clicking angrily.**

"Don't make him angry, Dad!" Lily told the book pointlessly.

"**I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveler gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me on scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend, and a good man. **

"Bet Hagrid's the only person in the world who could get a recommendation from a giant, man-eating spider," Fred mumbled.

"He might not be so bad if he's got the measure of Hagrid," James said hopefully.

**When I was discovered, and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid's goodness. . . ."**

"Hagrid!" Teddy moaned. "You started an acromantula colony! In the forest next to a school!"

**Harry summoned what remained of his courage.**

"**So you never — never attacked anyone?"**

"**Never," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never harmed a human. **

"Thank God," Teddy muttered fervently.

**The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and the quiet. . . ."**

"**But then . . . Do you know what **_**did **_**kill that girl?" said Harry.**

_The girl died in a bathroom…_ Teddy thought, remembering his brief suspicion about Moaning Myrtle. But the situation quickly drew his thoughts away from mystery-solving. Time for that once Harry and Ron got out okay.

"**Because whatever it is, it's back and attacking people again —"**

**His words were drowned by a loud outbreak of clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting angrily; large black shapes shifted all around him.**

"I told you not to make them angry!" Lily cried, trying to shake the most recent spidery image out of her head.

"**The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school."**

"**What is it?" said Harry urgently.**

**More loud clicking, more rustling; the spiders seemed to be closing in.**

"Time to leave," Rose said tensely.

"**We do not speak of it!" said Aragog fiercely. "We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me, many times."**

**Harry didn't want to press the subject, not with the spiders pressing closer on all sides.**

"Smart thinking," James muttered.

**Aragog seemed to be tired of talking.**

They exchanged extremely nervous looks.

**He was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly toward Harry and Ron.**

Lily whimpered. Rose grabbed Albus's wrist in a vice-like grip, leaning over his shoulder to try to read what happened more quickly. Albus read as fast as he could without garbling the words.

"**We'll just go, then," Harry called desperately to Aragog, hearing leaves rustling behind him.**

"**Go?" said Aragog slowly. "I think not. . . ."**

"**But — but —"**

"**My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friend of Hagrid."**

"Okay, definitely not okay, no matter what he thinks of Hagrid," James decided, white-faced.

**Harry spun around. Feet away, towering above him, was a solid wall of spiders, clicking, their many eyes gleaming in their ugly black heads.**

Albus had to swallow hard before he kept reading. He would be having nightmares about this one, he thought, glad that Hugo was nowhere near this part of the book.

**Even as he reached for his wand, Harry knew it was no good, there were too many of them, but as he tried to stand, ready to die fighting, **

Albus stumbled a bit on the last thought. _Even then…_ he thought. His father must have been made of courage. Teddy was thinking along the same lines, but James was impatient. He poked his brother in the side to get him to hurry up and keep reading.

**a loud, long note sounded, and a blaze of light flamed through the hollow.**

**Mr. Weasley's car **

"YES!" Fred and James nearly screamed.

"Knew it!" James cried, giddy with relief.

Rose sighed and sagged back, letting go of Al's wrist. Relief flooded the rest of their faces, too. Maybe it was a good thing they flew a car to Hogwarts after all.

**was thundering down the slope, headlights glaring, its horn screeching, knocking spiders aside; several were thrown onto their backs, their endless legs waving in the air. **

"Go car!" Fred and James cheered, punching the air triumphantly.

**The car screeched to a halt in front of Harry and Ron and the doors**

**flew open.**

"**Get Fang!" Harry yelled, diving into the front seat; Ron seized the boarhound around the middle and threw him, yelping, into the back of the car — the doors slammed shut — Ron didn't touch the accelerator but the car didn't need him; the engine roared and they were off, hitting more spiders. **

"Yeah, run as many over as you can!" James said forcefully. "They deserve it."

**They sped up the slope, out of the hollow, and they were soon crashing through the forest, branches whipping the windows as the car wound its way cleverly through the widest gaps, following a path it obviously knew.**

"It's even a _clever_ wild, flying car," Fred said, impressed. He was quickly falling in love with this car.

**Harry looked sideways at Ron. His mouth was still open in the silent scream, but his eyes weren't popping anymore.**

"**Are you okay?"**

**Ron stared straight ahead, unable to speak.**

"Poor Dad," Rose said sympathetically. "I suppose I can't blame him for not even wanting to _look_ at spiders now. That must have been horrible."

**They smashed their way through the undergrowth, Fang howling loudly in the back seat, **

"And poor Fang!" Lily added. "They've just scarred him for life!"

**and Harry saw the side mirror snap off as they squeezed past a large oak. After ten noisy, rocky minutes, the trees thinned, and Harry could again see patches of sky.**

**The car stopped so suddenly that they were nearly thrown into the windshield. They had reached the edge of the forest. Fang flung himself at the window in his anxiety to get out, and when Harry opened the door, he shot off through the trees to Hagrid's house, tail between his legs. Harry got out too, and after a minute or so, Ron seemed to regain the feeling in his limbs and followed, still stiff-necked and staring. Harry gave the car a grateful pat as it reversed back into the forest and disappeared from view.**

There were a couple of disappointed moans from Fred and James that the car was out of the story again.

**Harry went back into Hagrid's cabin to get the Invisibility Cloak. Fang was trembling under a blanket in his basket. **

"Oooh," Lily cooed sympathetically.

**When Harry got outside again, he found Ron being violently sick in the**

**pumpkin patch.**

"Can't blame him one bit," Scorpius muttered, shuddering at just the thought of that clearing, He wouldn't be surprised if he became as jumpy as Hugo over spiders after this.

"**Follow the spiders," said Ron weakly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I'll never forgive Hagrid. We're lucky to be alive."**

"No kidding," Rose said, a bit angry at Hagrid for sending them into that clearing in the first place. They really could have been killed! And she realized that, even with all their adventures the previous year, this was the closest her father had come to really being killed. He was twelve. Well, thirteen by then. But still, she shuddered.

"**I bet he thought Aragog wouldn't hurt friends of his," said Harry.**

"I bet he didn't believe Arogog would hurt a fly," Teddy muttered. He loved Hagrid, but his perspective on what was safe and what wasn't was very skewed. Skewed enough to be dangerous in itself sometimes.

"**That's exactly Hagrid's problem!" said Ron, thumping the wall of the cabin. "He always thinks monsters aren't as bad as they're made out, and look where it's got him! A cell in Azkaban!" He was shivering uncontrollably now. "What was the point of sending us in there? What have we found out, I'd like to know?"**

"That the last victim was a girl who died in a bathroom," Teddy said quietly.

"We didn't know that already?" James asked, furrowing his eyebrows. He knew he was not destined to be an Auror. He couldn't keep all these clues straight.

"We didn't know she was found in a bathroom," Teddy told him.

Rose suddenly gasped.

"You've figured it all out, haven't you?" Albus said, struggling to keep up with his cousin. He could tell the pieces were all there, but his brain was still reeling with relief and awe that his father and uncle had survived to place it all together.

"Not _all _of it," Rose said modestly. "But I think I know where the Chamber is now."

She and Teddy exchanged looks that said they'd both figured something out. Scorpius was looking like he was close behind.

The girl was found in a bathroom… she died in a bathroom at Hogwarts… Albus's eyes widened as he realized. Hastily he returned to the book, wanting to confirm his suspicion. Surely his father and uncle would put it together quickly if he could.

"**That Hagrid never opened the Chamber of Secrets," said Harry, throwing the cloak over Ron and prodding him in the arm to make him walk. "He was innocent."**

"But we already knew that!" James said in frustration.

"They didn't know for sure," Rose reminded him impatiently.

"It's Hagrid!" James exclaimed.

"But now they know for _sure _that he's completely innocent."

"I don't know if I'd call starting an acromantula colony 'innocent'," Teddy muttered.

**Ron gave a loud snort. Evidently, hatching Aragog in a cupboard wasn't his idea of being innocent.**

**As the castle loomed nearer Harry twitched the cloak to make sure their feet were hidden, then pushed the creaking front doors ajar. They walked carefully back across the entrance hall and up the marble staircase, holding their breath as they passed corridors where watchful sentries were walking. At last they reached the safety of the Gryffindor common room, where the fire had burned itself into glowing ash. They took off the cloak and climbed the winding stair to their dormitory.**

"I don't think I could have made it that far," Scorpius mumbled. "My legs would have given out halfway through the castle after that."

**Ron fell onto his bed without bothering to get undressed. Harry, however, didn't feel very sleepy. **

"Terrified I could see, but somehow I don't think that's what's going on in his head," said James, half-incredulous, half-impressed by his father's reaction to surviving a horde of angry acromantuals.

**He sat on the edge of his fourposter, thinking hard about everything Aragog had said.**

**The creature that was lurking somewhere in the castle, he thought, sounded like a sort of monster Voldemort — even other monsters didn't want to name it. **

"That's an interesting way to think of it," said Teddy thoughtfully. Maybe he's starting to connect Voldemrot to all of it….

**But he and Ron were no closer to finding out what it was, or how it Petrified its victims. Even Hagrid had never known what was in the Chamber of Secrets.**

**Harry swung his legs up onto his bed and leaned back against his pillows, watching the moon glinting at him through the tower window.**

**He couldn't see what else they could do. They had hit dead ends everywhere. Riddle had caught the wrong person, the Heir of Slytherin had got off, and no one could tell whether it was the same person, or a different one, who had opened the Chamber this time.**

"Yes," Rose whispered, back in mystery-mode. "That's still the thing I can't figure out. Who could it be?"

No one knew.

**There was nobody else to ask. Harry lay down, still thinking about what Aragog had said.**

"You lot have all figured something out, haven't you?" James asked, looking between his brother and his friends to Teddy. It wasn't that James (or Fred for that matter) wasn't smart. He made good marks. But he did not have the mind of a detective the way the rest seemed to. So what if someone had died in a bathroom? What did it make a difference _where _it happened?

"James," Rose sighed impatiently. "Who do we know that's died in a bathroom?"

"No one," James said blankly. "They died fifty years before Dad even got to school."

But Lily was perking up, obviously catching on.

James however, couldn't see how they weren't stumped. There _was _no one left to ask. Even if the others somehow had figured out who the dead girl was, they couldn't very well ask her unless… unless she was a ghost. A ghost who haunted a girls' toilet. And just like that James was caught up.

**He was becoming drowsy when what seemed like their very last hope occurred to him, and he suddenly sat bolt upright.**

"**Ron," he hissed through the dark, "Ron —"**

**Ron woke with a yelp like Fang's, stared wildly around, and saw Harry.**

"**Ron — that girl who died. Aragog said she was found in a bathroom," said Harry, ignoring Neville's snuffling snores from the corner. "What if she never left the bathroom? What if she's still there?"**

**Ron rubbed his eyes, frowning through the moonlight. And then he understood, too.**

"**You **_**don't **_**think — not **_**Moaning Myrtle**_**?"**

"Knew it!" James said excitedly.

Rose rolled her eyes. "We all knew it, James."

"But if Myrtle was the one who died," Albus said slowly, closing the book.

"That's a major lead," Teddy said. "She could know everything."

"Well it's about time they cracked this thing," James said, picking up the book and flipping through the table of condense. "We've only got three chapters left."

"I think we should wait until after dinner to keep reading," Teddy said.

"What?" James asked, looking up at Teddy. "We can't stop now! The next chapter's called the Chamber of Secrets! We're gonna find everything out!"

"I know, but dinner'll be ready soon and I don't think we'll want to stop at all until we're done once we start the next chapter."

"That's a good point," Rose agreed, snatching the book away from James and stuffing it in her bag as they heard a few pops signaling more adults arriving for dinner.

They all got to their feet, stretching and, once again, feeling odd emerging into the normal world again, out of the past.

"But can you believe Dad and Ron _survived _that!" James burst out, spinning around to talk to Fred and his brother and walk backwards, suddenly full of energy. "That was wicked! The best one of their adventures so far, I think!"

"The most dangerous, that's for sure," Rose muttered. "They only survived because they got lucky."

Rose and James spent the rest of the walk back to the house debating the danger-wickedness scale and how this adventure ranked on it, until they got close enough to be overheard and had to stop.

Teddy wished, vainly, he knew, that Harry would stop getting into situations like that. He didn't like to think how many chances there'd been for him to not have a godfather at all. And how it had become a habit for Harry.

**A/N: So what did you think? Yup, gotta ask! Hey, we're so close to 400 reviews! Ah! I can't believe it! You guys are great! Thank you so much! I wonder how many we'll get before this is over… :D **


	14. The Chamber of Secrets

**Disclaimer: You think **_**we **_**could come up with something as awesome as Harry Potter? HA! **

**A/N: Can you believe we're back so soon? Neither can we! We thought you deserved some quick updates since we're getting close to the end of another book! The beginning is a bit long, but we rather enjoyed writing these non-book scenes, so we hope you enjoy them too! Thanks for reviewing! Over 400! Ah! we're so excited! **

Chapter Sixteen

The Chamber of Secrets

Everything seemed normal. James and Fred did their best to get on Molly's nerves. Rose, Albus, and Scorpius had their heads close together at the end of the table, whispering and laughing at inside jokes. Roxanne, Dominique, and Lucy were giggling over some boy they'd seen in the village. Louis and Lily were having a pumpkin-juice-chugging contest for the last roll. Victoire was relating her day of career-shopping to Teddy in an undertone so Percy wouldn't hear how 'excited' she was. It certainly didn't seem like they were hiding anything, Harry thought as he surveyed his children and nieces and nephews that evening at dinner. Their only give was that Hugo was sitting between both his parents instead of next to Lily like he usually did. But that wasn't so uncommon for Hugo.

Perhaps he was getting paranoid.

"Ron says you're peeved with us."

George's voice shook Harry out of his surreptitious observing. George was leaning across the table, an old innocent expression that deceived no one plastered on his face.

"Yeah, I am, actually," he said as Ron looked around to hear what he'd done to get in trouble. "Teddy came to see me this morning. He was upset about something he overheard you two gits talking about. Can you think what that might have been?"

Ron and George exchanged baffled looks.

"We got into an argument about the Chudley Cannons last night," George said, frowning. "I know Ron managed to brainwash him into being a fan when he was a kid, but I thought he'd come to his senses by now."

"It wasn't about Quidditch," Harry said. He looked around to check that Hugo and Hermione were engaged in conversation with Ginny and that Angelina was too busy telling her son off for spilling cranberry sauce in Molly's lap to overhear before he hissed, "He heard you talking about the summer before our second year when you lot came and ripped the bars off my windows. He thought I'd been abused or something. You should know not to rattle on about things like that when the kids are around, even if Teddy's twenty. They don't need to know all the details."

On Ron's other side, Hugo shifted guiltily, eavesdropping as he pretended to listen to his mother and aunt. But no one noticed. George and Ron were too busy racking their brains to remember when anything remotely close to a conversation like this might have occurred.

"We _don't _rattle on about that sort of thing, mate. Especially around any of the kids," said Ron.

"I don't even remember the last time that even came up," George added, screwing up his face in an effort to recall. "It would've been years ago at least."

"It's not something I particularly like to chat about," Ron said, face growing stormy at the memory.

"But he knew everything that happened," Harry said, looking from one to the other. "You two are the only ones that knew…"

"Well, not the _only _ones," Ron said, and when Harry looked at him sharply he added defensively, "Oh come off it, you can't really think I'd keep something like that from Hermione. When you find your best friend imprisoned and half-starved in his own house, you've got to tell _someone_!"

"Not a kid who's had to deal with enough parental-figure issues already," Harry said flatly.

"Yeah, we know that," George assured him. "Maybe we let something slip in passing or when we didn't think anyone was listening, but we wouldn't go discussing all of that where anyone could hear it."

"He knew about the cat flap," Harry told them, "How else would he have known about that?"

"What cat flap?" Ron asked sharply.

George's eyes had widened suddenly. "That thing on the bottom of your door? That was for _you_? That little slot was what? What they _fed _you through or something?"

"You – er – didn't know about that?" Harry said sheepishly.

Ron and George shook their heads. It had been too dark for Ron to see and George hadn't known what it was.

"No wonder you looked like a bloody walking skeleton," Ron said in a low, furious voice.

Beside him, Hugo bit his lip. The book had not gone into detail about Harry's appearance. And hearing his father and uncle's reactions made it even worse.

"But how did Teddy know about all of this if you didn't?" Harry asked, pushing hurriedly past the subject of his childhood. "And why would he tell me he heard it from you two if he didn't?"

Ron and George shrugged.

"Think he ran into your cousin or something? Didn't like to bring it up?" Ron suggested.

"Maybe," Harry said skeptically. "I think it was a different source, though."

He looked down the table to where his godson was laughing as he held James's spoon out of reach, preventing him from attacking the apple crumble his grandmother had just set in front of him. It disconcerted him that Teddy had lied to him. Especially about something like this. For the most part, Teddy had never had a problem talking to him. Harry kept his secrets, but Teddy, and everyone else, understood the reasons behind that. What did his godson have to lie about?

"I think I'll have a word with him about it, later."

But later didn't pan out.

Harry watched as Teddy slipped away from the table before desert was half-finished, followed a few minutes later by Victoire. He knew, as he watched them disappear into the night, that there would be no talking to him until tomorrow, and he knew that that was exactly what Teddy had intended. He had also watched Hugo slip from between his parents and dash to the other end of the table with the pretense of retrieving a pitcher of pumpkin juice, but in actuality whispering something urgently in Teddy's ear.

He watched as the rest of the children departed in groups for the paddock as they usually did to play or watch their nightly Quidditch match. And to Harry's surprise and slight suspicion, Molly stood up abruptly and declared that she, too, was going to the paddock. Molly had rarely consented to watch her cousins play, especially at night when she claimed it was too dark to see anyway.

Yes, it seemed normal enough, Harry thought. But there was just the faintest hint of choreography behind each group's departure, the slightest bit of mischief in their faces as they extracted themselves from the adults.

He thought about going after them, and seeing what they were up to. But he had never liked the idea of spying on his children. He would wait. Let them do their share of sneaking around and keeping secrets. Teddy was in on it after all, he would keep an eye on them. But Harry was going to talk to him tomorrow.

XxXxX

"Oi, Love birds!" James called in a hushed shout into the dark trees. "We've got a problem!"

He could hear his cousins and brother and sister starting a loud argument over who would play what positions as he ran to get Teddy, the official dispute settler of the Weasley clan. They were giving him time to figure out a way around this unforeseen (okay, not entirely unforeseen according to Rose) obstacle.

There was a rustling and a moment later Victoire emerged through a tangle of bushes, pulling Teddy by the hand. There were leaves in their hair and a goofy sort of grin on Teddy's face. James made a face at them.

"Could you _be _a little grosser?" he hissed.

"What's the problem?" Teddy asked, ignoring the last remark. "Weren't we going to meet in that clearing on the other side of the orchard?"

"Yeah, we were, but then Molly decided to come watch our game," James told him. "Which means we can't sneak off."

"That could pose difficulties," Teddy agreed.

"Fred and I were thinking about pelting her with dung bombs," James said as the three of them made their way towards the group.

"There's no need for that," Victoire said quickly, imagining the ruckus that would bring, not to mention the trouble Fred and James were likely to get into. "Leave Molly to me. Just play your game, and I'll take care of it."

"How?" James asked, raising an eyebrow at his cousin.

"Don't worry," Victoire assured them, flashing a mysterious smile as they reached the group, and she glided off towards where Lucy and Molly were sitting at the edge of the paddock, the former casting half-nervous, half-exasperated looks at her sister.

"But I _never _get to play beater!" Louis was complaining loudly.

"I want to be on Roxie's team!" Lily whined.

"I don't want to be with James! He throws too hard!" Hugo exclaimed, crossing his arms.

"I do not, you pansy," James said, flicking Hugo's ear as he joined them. "Teddy's playing now, so you don't have to play chaser anyway."

"Teddy's playing?" Dominique asked, raising an eyebrow at James.

"Change of plans," he said pointedly.

It was amazing how quickly what had been heated disputes only moments before melted into compromises. Suddenly Louis was content to play Keeper as he usually did, Lily didn't care who's team she was on, Rose didn't want to borrow Dominique's good gloves, and Hugo happily ran to flop down beside Lucy, safely out of the way. (Flying and the dark; he could handle both separately, but he was not a fan of them together. It tended to end with him being hit hard by some flying object, be it apple, egg, or occasionally one of his cousins.)

The ten of them soared into the air, James and Teddy teamed up against Lily and Roxanne, Fred and Dominique whacking their charmed egg-bludgers at each other, Rose and Louis each defending goals at either end of their field, and Scorpius and Albus squinting through the night for the walnut they had painted gold and that Victoire was idly levitating around the pitch for them.

Teddy navigated through the blurs of dark figures that were his teammates, only able to avoid collision by the faint glimmer from the stars. He kept one eye on the apple they were using in lieu of a quaffle, and the other on his girlfriend. He could make out her strawberry-blond hair glowing pink in the starlight as she talked easily with Molly. She and Rose were the only two who could really carry on a conversation with Molly. Victoire could talk to just about anybody. There was something in her voice, her easy smile, her intent blue eyes, that compelled people to talk. Teddy thought it was the Veela coming out in her.

It was only about twenty minutes into the game that Victoire called Teddy down to take her place levitating the walnut around the field and Hugo reluctantly grabbed a broom to partner James as Chaser. Ignoring Fred and Louis's loud complaints that he would be biased for his team and direct the 'snitch' right up Scorpius's sleeve, he soared down to land clumsily beside Victoire. She laughed lightly as she caught his arm to prevent him falling headlong and brushed a quick kiss across his lips before she and Molly headed off towards the Burrow.

"She's good," Hugo said the moment the girls were out of earshot.

"How'd she do it?" James demanded, landing beside Teddy (with an easy grace that no amount of gold in the world could get Teddy to admit he was jealous of).

"She got Molly talking about O.W.L.s and careers and everywhere Uncle Percy's been taking her. They're going off to make a _portfolio _and probably a load of lists and other junk that Molly loves," Hugo told the rest. "It was brilliant. There was no way Molly would give up the chance to organize a job search."

Fred let out a low whistle from ten feet above their heads. "I get the feeling we're going to be owing Vic big-time."

"More like Teddy will be," James snickered, dodging the smack Teddy aimed for the back of his head.

"Better get going in case she decides to come back," Dominique warned from the other end of the paddock.

"Who wins then?" Hugo asked, peering over Lucy's (the designated score-keeper) shoulder to look at the marks she'd made on a scrap bit of parchment.

"No one," Rose said, rolling her eyes as she landed beside her little brother. "No one caught the snitch. We'll pick it up tomorrow or something."

Albus, Scorpius, Lily, Fred, and Roxanne all landed with a whoosh and threw their brooms aside. Roxanne flopped down on the grass to keep Lucy company while the three remaining Quidditch players took it in turns to go head to head in the dark. Teddy lit his wand and led the rest of the group into the dark trees that blocked the paddock from view of the village.

"How come we don't just go back to the house?" Lily asked, skipping a step to keep up with Teddy and catch his hand.

"The idea was that if anyone came looking for us, we were close enough for the others to signal us back to the paddock and we wouldn't be missed," Teddy explained. "But now there's the added bonus of not having to sneak past Molly and risk ruining Victoire's hard work."

Although only Roxanne was in on the secret of what they were up to, Dominique, Louis, and even Lucy had consented to help cover for them.

"It'll be dark and creepy out here," Lily said doubtfully, looking at the dark, looming silhouettes of trees all around them with wide eyes.

"Don't worry, Lils, I'll keep you safe," James said confidently from behind her, poking his sister in the back of the head.

"I think that might make me more worried," Lily said, shooting a cheeky grin over her shoulder. Her brother faked a wounded expression.

It wasn't very far to the clearing they had picked as a rendezvous point; close enough to be summoned back to the paddock quickly if they needed to be. Teddy conjured a few orbs of light to hover like lanterns around the clearing and a little blue fire to sit in a glass bowl in the middle. The effect was rather beautiful and he smirked at the others' impressed gaping.

"Couldn't conjure us some comfortable arm chairs, could you?" Fred asked hopefully as he lowered himself to the hard ground again.

"Sorry, mate," Teddy said. He flicked his wand and a few blankets floated gently to the ground. "Best I can do I'm afraid."

Fred shrugged. "Eh, better than a hot, spidery weed-patch behind an old shed."

They settled in the now-familiar semicircle around the fire with Scorpius, Rose, and Albus on one blanket, Fred and James on another beside them, Hugo and Lily bundled up in the third, and Teddy sprawled on the grass, leaning against a well-placed sapling. Rose pulled the book out of her bag and weighed it in her hand, starting to feel again the tension and suspense the entire book had been building to.

"Who wants to read?" she asked.

"I will," James offered at once, snatching the book from her.

He flipped to the chapter Rose had marked with a bookmark and read with a dramatic flourish

**Chapter sixteen**

**The Chamber of Secrets **

He paused to let the impact of these words sink in (even though they all already knew what the chapter was called).

"This is it," Fred whispered into the hush that had settled over their little, magically-illuminated clearing.

"All mysteries will be solved here," Albus agreed.

"Ready to find out who the heir of Slytherin is and what they've been using to attack everyone?" Scorpius asked.

For an answer, James began reading, Teddy shifting one of the glowing orbs to hover right above his head to give him plenty of light.

**All those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets away," said Ron bitterly at breakfast next day, "and we could've asked her, and now . . ."**

"Yeah, the answer was right under their nose the whole time," Fred realized. "And now I'll bet there's no way they can sneak into an out-of-order girls' toilet right next to the scene of the first attack. Not with teachers watching their every breath."

**It had been hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping their teachers long enough to sneak into a girls' bathroom, the girls' bathroom, moreover, right next to the scene of the first attack, was going to be almost impossible.**

Fred smirked in a satisfied sort of way as his suspicions were proved dead-on.

**But something happened in their first lesson, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their minds for the first time in weeks. **

"What could be big enough to do that?" Hugo wondered.

**Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall told them that their exams would start on the first of June, one week from today.**

"That," Albus told his little cousin.

"_Exams_?" Fred said incredulously. "Are they mental? Or maybe just cruel? How is anyone supposed to be focusing on studying and work when the school's in this state?"

"That's kind of the whole point of keeping the school open at this point," Rose pointed out.

Fred scoffed.

"_**Exams**_**?" howled Seamus Finnigan. "We're still getting **_**exams**_**?"**

"See? Even they're surprised and upset," Fred told Rose.

**There was a loud bang behind Harry as Neville Longbottom's wand slipped, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. Professor McGonagall restored it with a wave of her own wand, and turned, frowning, to Seamus.**

"**The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education," she said sternly. "The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all studying hard."**

"Of course, we've got our McGonagall-miniature over there," James sighed, nodding at Rose.

She only gave him a dignified sort of I-told-you-so look.

**Studying hard! It had never occurred to Harry that there would be exams with the castle in this state. **

"Exactly!" Fred said in outrage. "No one's going to pass!"

**There was a great deal of mutinous muttering around the room, which made Professor McGonagall scowl even more darkly.**

"**Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible," she said. "And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year."**

**Harry looked down at the pair of white rabbits he was supposed to be turning into slippers. What had he learned so far this year? He couldn't seem to think of anything that would be useful in an exam.**

"Yes, I suppose how to crash a flying car, make an illegal potion without getting caught, identity theft, the reason behind Hagrid's explosion, how Moaning Myrtle died, and NEVER follow the spiders probably won't come up on too many exams," Teddy said sadly.

**Ron looked as though he'd just been told he had to go and live in the Forbidden Forest.**

"**Can you imagine me taking exams with this?" he asked Harry, holding up his wand, which had just started whistling loudly.**

Nearly everyone winced at the thought.

"Dad _really _needs to get a new wand," Rose said fervently.

**Three days before their first exam, Professor McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast.**

"**I have good news," she said, **

Everyone perked up, looking curiously at the book in James's hands. They hadn't expected good news so soon. They'd expected a lot of scary, tension-filled moments and some potentially-disturbing revelations similar to the end of the previous book. Good news was a surprise.

**and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.**

"**Dumbledore's coming back!" several people yelled joyfully.**

"**You've caught the Heir of Slytherin!" squealed a girl at the Ravenclaw table.**

"If only it could be so simple," Teddy sighed.

"It'd be kind of a let-down," said James. "I mean, Dad and Ron and Hermione do all this snooping just to get beaten out in the home stretch?"

"We could skip the scary ending, though," Albus pointed out.

"**Quidditch matches are back on!" roared Wood excitedly.**

"Now _that _would be good news," James interrupted himself to say.

**When the hubbub had subsided, Professor McGonagall said, "Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. **

"See? You're mum'll be fine!" Lily said happily to Hugo.

The rest murmured relieved agreements. Hugo smiled weakly. He was more than ready to forget that particular thing had ever happened. (Although somehow he doubted it would very easy to forget about.)

**I need hardly remind you all that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit."**

"If it doesn't, I'm going to be rather disappointed in Dad's sleuth skills," said James.

"Between what Harry and Ron know and what Hermione is bound to have figured out – especially if she's been, you know, 'awake' for the last few weeks with nothing to do but think – they can hardly _not _figure it all out," Teddy pointed out.

"One month of extra-concentrated Aunt-Hermione-brain-power," Fred said thoughtfully. "That could be the most potent thing in the world. They should try to capture it or something when she wakes up."

**There was an explosion of cheering. Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and wasn't at all surprised to see that Draco Malfoy hadn't joined in. **

"Yeah, big surprise there," Fred muttered, rolling his eyes.

**Ron, however, was looking happier than he'd looked in days.**

"Of course," Rose said, smiling. "Mum's coming back."

"**It won't matter that we never asked Myrtle, then!" he said to Harry. "Hermione'll probably have all the answers when they wake her up! Mind you, she'll go crazy when she finds out we've got exams in three days' time. She hasn't studied. It might be kinder to leave her where she is till they're over."**

"I dunno if she'd forgive them if they did that," Albus sniggered, remembering Rose's reaction to over-sleeping before they're potions exam and missing the opportunity to review beforehand. Multiply that times missing every single exam and she might just have exploded.

**Just then, Ginny Weasley **

"Why do they still use her last name?" James asked no one in particular and didn't wait for a response.

**came over and sat down next to Ron. She looked tense and nervous, and Harry noticed that her hands were twisting in her lap.**

Teddy straightened up, looking concerned.

"What's the matter with her?" Lily asked anxiously.

"Think she found out something?" Albus asked in barely more than a whisper. "She used to be as tricky as Lily if our uncles are to be believed."

"I hope for her sake it's just been a hard year," Teddy said quietly.

"**What's up?" said Ron, helping himself to more porridge.**

**Ginny didn't say anything, but glanced up and down the Gryffindor table with a scared look on her face that reminded Harry of someone, though he couldn't think who.**

They exchanged apprehensive looks.

"**Spit it out," said Ron, watching her. Harry suddenly realized who Ginny looked like. She was rocking backward and forward slightly in her chair, exactly like Dobby did when he was teetering on the edge of revealing forbidden information.**

"There's definitely something wrong," Rose murmured. She couldn't ever remember her aunt looking anything close to that description. Even when she was young, it seemed like strange behavior.

"She knows something," Teddy murmured. "Something big."

"How?" James demanded, "The book's hardly even talked about her! When did she go all sleuth?"

"Maybe she wasn't _trying _to find something out," Albus suggested nervously. He had nearly forgotten that his mother was there, in the middle of all of this too.

"Keep reading, Jamie," Teddy said tensely.

"**I've got to tell you something," Ginny mumbled, carefully not looking at Harry.**

Everybody was looking hard at the book.

"**What is it?" said Harry.**

**Ginny looked as though she couldn't find the right words.**

"_**What**_**?" said Ron.**

**Ginny opened her mouth, but no sound came out. **

Teddy frowned. Why was it so difficult for her to relay whatever she knew? Was it because it was someone they knew that she was reporting? Had she been threatened to keep her mouth shut? The last thought drew a mixture of anger and fear from him. Maybe it was because she reminded him of Lily, or because it disconcerted him to hear about Ginny being small and frightened when she was anything but, but Teddy dreaded hearing that something bad had happened to her.

**Harry leaned forward and spoke quietly, so that only Ginny and Ron could hear him.**

"**Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?"**

**Ginny drew a deep breath and, at that precise moment, Percy Weasley appeared, looking tired and wan.**

"**If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving, I've only just come off patrol duty."**

"Uncle Percy!" Fred said in frustration. "We were just about to find something out!"

**Ginny jumped up as though her chair had just been electrified, gave Percy a fleeting, frightened look, and scampered away. **

"What was that?" Albus asked.

"Since when has Mum ever been _frightened _of any of her brothers?" Lily wondered, bewildered.

"Since when has she 'scampered'?" James snorted.

"I suppose she was young," Rose said uncertainly. Her aunt must have been about her age by this point, though. Rose didn't think that was so young.

"Mum's been acting weird this whole book," James said, shaking his head. "Blushing and keeping diaries and crying over evil, petrified cats…"

**Percy sat down and grabbed a mug from the center of the table.**

"**Percy!" said Ron angrily. "She was just about to tell us something important!"**

**Halfway through a gulp of tea, Percy choked.**

"**What sort of thing?" he said, coughing.**

"What's up with _him_?" Fred asked.

"**I just asked her if she'd seen anything odd, and she started to say —"**

"**Oh — that — that's nothing to do with the Chamber of Secrets," said Percy at once.**

"How does he know?"

"**How do you know?" said Ron, his eyebrows raised.**

"**Well, er, if you must know, Ginny, er, walked in on me the other day when I was — well, never mind — the point is, she spotted me doing something and I, um, I asked her not to mention it to anybody. **

Fred and James exchanged raised eyebrows.

"What's old Perce been up to?" Fred asked, smirking.

Teddy briefly remembered his suspicions about Percy's romantic life, but could find very little curiosity here. Maybe it was just something stupid about Percy that Ginny had discovered. The others seemed to have accepted this explanation. He tried to think of something that might make her that anxious to let slip. He couldn't come up with much, but he hoped that was what it was.

**I must say, I did think she'd keep her word. It's nothing, really, I'd just rather —"**

**Harry had never seen Percy look so uncomfortable.**

"**What were you doing, Percy?" said Ron, grinning. "Go on, tell us, we won't laugh."**

"His grin begs to differ," Rose muttered. Boys _always _laughed when they said they wouldn't.

**Percy didn't smile back.**

"**Pass me those rolls, Harry, I'm starving."**

**Harry knew the whole mystery might be solved tomorrow without their help, but he wasn't about to pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turned up — **

"Of course not. Wouldn't make it as an Auror if he could," Teddy muttered with a half-smile.

**and to his delight it did, midmorning, when they were being led to History of Magic by Gilderoy Lockhart. Lockhart, who had so often assured them that all danger had passed, only to be proved wrong right away, was now wholeheartedly convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see them safely down the corridors. **

"Git," Fred couldn't help but mutter.

**His hair wasn't as sleek as usual; **

"Oh, good lord! Whatever will his fan girls think?" Fred gasped in mock-horror.

**It seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.**

"**Mark my words," he said, ushering them around a corner. "The first words out of those poor Petrified people's mouths will be '**_**It**__**was Hagrid.**_**' **

"Idiot," Lily sniffed angrily, crossing her arms.

**Frankly, I'm astounded Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are necessary."**

"**I agree, sir," said Harry, **

"Huh?" Albus asked.

"It's finally happened, he's cracked!" Fred exclaimed.

"Or he's just trying to get Lockhart to ditch them," Teddy said, rolling his eyes.

"I suppose that makes sense too," James conceded.

**making Ron drop his books in surprise.**

"**Thank you, Harry," said Lockhart graciously while they waited for a long line of Hufflepuffs to pass. "I mean, we teachers have quite enough to be getting on with, without walking students to classes and standing guard all night. . . ."**

"**That's right," said Ron, catching on. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go —"**

"**You know, Weasley, I think I will," said Lockhart. "I really should go and prepare my next class —"**

**And he hurried off.**

"Wow, that was almost scary-easy," Fred said.

"Not very responsible, is he?" Rose said disapprovingly.

"No, but it works out for us," Albus shrugged. "They can go find the Chamber of Secrets now."

"**Prepare his class," Ron sneered after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."**

**They let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them, then darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But just as they were congratulating each other on their brilliant scheme —**

"**Potter! Weasley! What are you doing?"**

"Three guesses who that is," Fred groaned.

"She always has the worst timing," James sighed. "I mean we were _just about _to hit the detonator! Detention would have been worth it if she'd just waited another minute!"

**It was Professor McGonagall, and her mouth was the thinnest of thin lines.**

"**We were — we were —" Ron stammered. "We were going to — to go and see —"**

"**Hermione," said Harry. Ron and Professor McGonagall both looked at him.**

"**We haven't seen her for ages, Professor," Harry went on hurriedly, treading on Ron's foot, "and we thought we'd sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell her the Mandrakes are nearly ready and, er, not to worry —"**

"He's good," Scorpius whistled while the others looked equally impressed. "If that doesn't soften her up, I don't know what will."

**Professor McGonagall was still staring at him, and for a moment, Harry thought she was going to explode, **

"Those are scary moments," Fred whispered.

**but when she spoke, it was in a strangely croaky voice.**

"**Of course," she said, and Harry, amazed, saw a tear glistening in her beady eye. **

This was not quite as amazing to the little group in the clearing. They had all attended memorial services, most of them their entire lives. Everybody cried there. Even the firm and inflexible Professor McGonagall.

"**Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been . . . I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."**

"Almost makes me feel bad they were lying through their teeth," Rose murmured.

"I don't know if I'd call it that," said Teddy. "Sure they had no intention of sneaking in to see Hermione, but I'm sure they've wanted to visit her. And she's right. It's been tough on them."

**Harry and Ron walked away, hardly daring to believe that they'd avoided detention. As they turned the corner, they distinctly heard Professor McGonagall blow her nose.**

"**That," said Ron fervently, "was the best story you've ever come up with."**

"It _was _pretty good, wasn't it?" James said proudly.

**They had no choice now but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Hermione.**

**Madam Pomfrey let them in, but reluctantly.**

"**There's just no **_**point **_**talking to a Petrified person," she said, and they had to admit she had a point when they'd taken their seats next to Hermione. It was plain that Hermione didn't have the faintest inkling that she had visitors, and that they might just as well tell her bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.**

Hugo wasn't sure if he should be relieved or not. He wished that his father and uncle's presence could offer some comfort, but maybe his mother hadn't needed it. Maybe it really had been just like being asleep.

"I think it does some good," Rose said suddenly. "To talk to Mum, I mean. Maybe she can't really understand them or respond, but I think, subconsciously, it helps. Like talking to a comatose patient."

"Probably harder on them to see her like that, though," Albus said sadly.

"**Wonder if she did see the attacker, though?" said Ron, looking sadly at Hermione's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know. . . ."**

**But Harry wasn't looking at Hermione's face. He was more interested in her right hand. It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist.**

There were some curious looks exchanged.

"That must have been what she went to the library for!" Rose said suddenly. "She'd figured something out, but she wanted to look it up!"

There was a new anticipation laying over them as James read on, everyone itching with curiosity over that scrunched-up piece of paper.

**Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to Ron.**

"**Try and get it out," Ron whispered, shifting his chair so that he blocked Harry from Madam Pomfrey's view. **

**It was no easy task. Hermione's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch he tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper came free.**

**It was a page torn from a very old library book. **

Fred had opened his mouth to comment on _Hermione _tearing a library book, but changed his mind. He could tell the story was on the verge of turning serious as everything hurtled towards a point. Rose seemed to be on the edge of her metaphorical seat and he thought there was a good chance she would bite his head off if he interrupted at this point.

**Harry smoothed it out eagerly and Ron leaned close to read it, too.**

_**Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, **_

To no one's surprise, Rose gasped and Teddy leaned back, closing his eyes.

"Of course," Rose breathed suddenly understanding why Harry had been able to hear it when no one else could.

James impatiently read on for the benefit of those who had not memorized _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_.

_**known also as the King of Serpents. **_

The rest of them experienced varying degrees of similar realization.

_**This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.**_

This information flooded at them so quickly, it was hard to keep up. Suddenly the puzzle was flying together, so quickly that it was difficult to tell what it was.

James looked up at the rest of them.

"It's a Bsilisk," he said quietly. "A snake that's why –"

"Dad could hear it!" Lily said excitedly, shooting to her knees.

"And it can live for hundreds of years," Scorpius added. "Perfect for storage."

"And the spiders," Teddy added. "They fled the castle, wouldn't speak of it."

"Hagrid's rooster!" Rose exclaimed suddenly. "They were being killed, remember?"

"it all makes sense," Albus breathed, trying not to let the fact that it _had _to be a snake make him squirm.

"It usually does in hindsight," Teddy said ruefully. "But most people don't know obscure facts like that or put them together."

"I have a question," Hugo said a little squeakily. "If they want to stop attacks for good, they've got to kill the Basilisk, right? How are they supposed to do that if just looking at it could kill you?"

"Through a rooster into the Chamber and lock the door?" Fred suggested.

"I don't know, but I have a feeling we're going to find out somehow," Teddy said with an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd known the beast would be, well, monstrous, but he'd hoped it could have been a bit less… deadly.

James turned his attention back to the book.

**And beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand Harry recognized as Hermione's. **_**Pipes.**_

Fred looked confused, but Rose clapped a hand to her forehead.

"Harry's been hearing that voice in the _walls_! In the _pipes_!"

"You mean, that thing's been slithering around in the _plumbing_?" James sputtered.

"How else could it get around without being noticed?" Rose asked.

**It was as though somebody had just flicked a light on in his brain.**

"**Ron," he breathed. "This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a **_**basilisk **_**— a giant serpent! **_**That's **_**why I've been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It's because I understand Parseltongue. . . ."**

**Harry looked up at the beds around him. **

"**The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But no one's died — **

"Yeah, why's – " Fred started to wonder, but James impatiently read over him.

**because no one looked it straight in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, but Colin just got Petrified.**

Albus could practically hear Rose's brain spinning into overdrive beside him as she recalled all the attack scenes.

"The mirror," she murmured. "Mum's mirror…"

James kept reading.

**Justin . . . Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn't die **_**again **_**. . . and Hermione and that Ravenclaw prefect were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realized the monster was a basilisk. I bet you anything she warned the first person she met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror — and —"**

**Ron's jaw had dropped.**

Several of the others were gaping at the book too, wondering why they hadn't even noticed any of those things. They were just details….

"It's always in the details," Teddy whispered remembering something Harry had told him. "Remember everything. Notice everything. Constant vigilance."

"**And Mrs. Norris?" he whispered eagerly.**

"Don't think she had a camera or a mirror or a ghost," Fred said curiously.

**Harry thought hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween.**

"**The water . . ." he said slowly. "The flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I bet you Mrs. Norris only saw the reflection. . . ."**

Fred looked impressed.

**He scanned the page in his hand eagerly. The more he looked at it, the more it made sense.**

"**. . . **_**The crowing of the rooster **_**. . . **_**is fatal to it**_**!" he read aloud. "Hagrid's roosters were killed! The Heir of Slytherin didn't want one anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened! **_**Spiders**__**flee before it**_**! It all fits!"**

"**But how's the basilisk been getting around the place?" said Ron. "A giant snake . . . Someone would've seen . . ."**

**Harry, however, pointed at the word Hermione had scribbled at the foot of the page.**

"**Pipes," he said. "Pipes . . . Ron, it's been using the plumbing. I've been hearing that voice inside the walls. . . ."**

**Ron suddenly grabbed Harry's arm.**

"**The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" he said hoarsely. "What if it's a bathroom? What if it's in —"**

Rose straightened up suddenly. She had thought about it when she realized that Moaning Myrtle must have been the last victim fifty years ago, but she had dismissed the idea. Just because a girl had been attacked in a bathroom didn't mean that was where the entrance was any more than in one of the corridors where other attacks had happened. But if it was using the plumbing….

The others realized the same thing as James read the next line.

"— _**Moaning Myrtle's bathroom,**_**" said Harry.**

**They sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it.**

"**This means," said Harry, "I can't be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how he's been controlling the basilisk."**

"But _who_?" Rose asked. It was the last missing puzzle piece and she could not think who could be opening the Chamber. There was always the possibility that it was some random student the book had never mentioned, but she doubted that was likely. Surely Harry and her parents would have noticed if someone was always around the attacks with all the snooping they'd done…

"**What're we going to do?" said Ron, whose eyes were flashing.**

"Tell someone," Teddy almost begged, even though he knew it was almost a lost cause. Voldeomrt in his weakened form was one thing, but a basilisk was huge and deadly and didn't make stupid mistakes like underestimating its prey. He imagined Harry, as short and scrawny as Al, attempting to fight a gigantic snake and shuddered.

"**Should we go straight to McGonagall?"**

"Yes!" Rose encouraged. "That's what you should do. She could call Dumbledore back and he could destroy the chamber and the Basilisk and you two would never have to run headlong into danger!"

"And what do you suppose are the chances of that happening to Dad?" James asked. If he was honest, he _didn't _want the teachers to fix everything. Sure it would be safer, but it would be boring. He wanted to hear about his father being a hero. He wanted to see everything happen.

"**Let's go to the staffroom," said Harry, jumping up. "She'll be there in ten minutes. It's nearly break."**

"I'll bet you've got to be a Parselmouth to get into the Chamber," Teddy groaned suddenly. "And that means Harry will _have _to go in…." He just knew, somehow, that luck would not let his godfather simply relay his information to an adult and sit back to see how they fixed everything. Harry had not gotten to be the Auror –the person – that he was by sitting back and watching other people do the work.

**They ran downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, **

Rose snorted softly. They did seem to do a lot of that during their second year.

**they went straight into the deserted staffroom. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs. Harry and Ron paced around it, too excited to sit down.**

**But the bell to signal break never came.**

"Why not?" Hugo asked nervously.

A dread had slunk its way into most of their stomachs. Something was about to happen.

**Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified.**

"_**All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staffroom. Immediately, please.**_**"**

James began to read more quickly, not pausing for the worried and confused looks on the others' faces.

**Harry wheeled around to stare at Ron.**

"**Not another attack? Not now?"**

"The Heir's getting desperate," Teddy said quietly. "They're closing in on him."

"**What'll we do?" said Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"**

"**No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."**

**They hid themselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staffroom door banging open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.**

"**It has happened," she told the silent staffroom. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."**

Rose clapped her hands to her mouth. Albus felt his stomach drop. Scorpius looked like he was feeling the same. Fred and James both had deadly serious expressions on their faces, and Lily and Hugo were wide-eyed. Teddy looked solemn. They all knew, without having to voice it, what this meant, why the heir had not settled for simply petrifying its next victim. Someone was _going _to die. The heir was making sure of it, for surely there was no way a student could make it out of the Chamber alive.

"Hostage," Teddy whispered.

James returned to the book, white-faced.

**Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, "How can you be sure?"**

"**The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, "left another message. Right underneath the first one. '**_**Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.**_**' "**

Fred swore. Lily let out a squeak. Albus felt even sicker. Rose wrapped her arms around herself, shivering suddenly in the dark night. Teddy rubbed a hand over his face. He had hoped it would be a while before they'd had to hear about someone dying. A girl, he realized. A little girl.

**Professor Flitwick burst into tears.**

"**Who is it?" said **

James suddenly stopped reading, opening and closing his mouth as if he couldn't suck in air. Fred was looking at him with concern, Teddy straightened. Everyone stared, but all James could do was stare at the name that had caught his eyes.

"Who is it?" Rose asked in a hoarse voice. She could feel dread like a cold hand wrapping around her middle. There were two people – two 'her's she could thing of that would make James look like that.

"James," Albus said sharply, feeling as if the darkness were closing in on him the longer he waited to hear who had been given a death sentence.

Gulping, James continued reading in a voice that shook hard.

"**Who is it?" said Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which student?"**

But James stopped again, the name getting stuck in his throat. The anticipation – the anxiety – was almost painful. Teddy wanted to get up and take the book from James to read for himself, but he was rooted the spot. For some reason he could not move a muscle.

Fred could. He leaned over to read over James's shoulder and swore again.

"Who is it?" Rose asked again in a high-pitched voice.

Fred glanced sideways at James, who was still trying to force the words through his mouth, then he read for him,

"**Ginny Weasley," said Professor McGonagall.**

No one had expected it. It hit like a title wave, leaving them cold and disoriented and sick. From the moment Hermione had run off to the library instead of safely out of the castle, some part of them had known what was coming, even if they didn't want to believe it. But Ginny had been in the background, half-remembered, safe because of her blood status and well away from the center of things.

"I didn't –" James began in a strangled sort of voice.

"Know?" Teddy asked hollowly. "Yeah, no one did."

They had all known that Harry had seen and done a lot of things as a child that grown wizards shouldn't have to, that everyone had been hit hard during the war, but this…. It was like a blow to the gut, blindsiding them.

"Mum…" Lily whimpered. Hugo put a comforting arm around her. A few hours ago that had been him. But it was worse for Lily. Her mother wasn't petrified. Merlin knew what was happening to her. He suppressed a shudder at that thought.

Albus was shivering. He thought of the memory he had recounted to Rose that morning before lunch; the one of his parents sitting on the kitchen floor, his mother crying. He had rarely wondered what was hidden in her eyes, what haunted her nightmares besides the war. He felt Rose grip his hand hard, but he scarcely felt her warmth. '_Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever'_… He shook violently at the thought.

"It was because she knew something," Teddy said in an odd voice. He should have seen it coming after the way she had been acting at breakfast, but he hadn't wanted to think about something happening to Ginny. It was strange to think it, knowing her now, but then, she had been so small and innocent.

"What happened to her?" James asked, voice wavering as badly as before.

Teddy just shook his head. He did not want to think what had happened to Ginny down in the Chamber. If he hadn't been looking at her three children, he would have been sure she was already worse than dead.

Fred looked around at his cousins' bone-white, shocked, and miserable faces. It made his stomach lurch to imagine his aunt – younger than he was now – locked helplessly in the Chamber of Secrets, but he knew it was nothing to how it was obviously hitting the rest. Well, most of the rest. He caught Scorpius's eye briefly and recognized another outsider – one even more outside than he was - miserable for his friend and at a loss as to what to do.

He grabbed the book from James's slack grip.

"So let's hurry up and hear how she got rescued," he said, his half-hearted bravado falling flatly in the shock and dread that was still rippling around most of them.

**Harry felt Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside him.**

"What he must have been thinking," Rose whispered. She tried to imagine how it would feel to hear that Hugo had been taken, but she couldn't even think about it.

"**We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow," said Professor McGonagall. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said . . ."**

**The staffroom door banged open again. For one wild moment, Harry was sure it would be Dumbledore. But it was Lockhart, and he was beaming.**

Fred groaned inwardly, but he didn't pause in his rapid reading. None of the others, not even James made any comment about the git, which to Fred showed just how hard the information about Ginny had hit.

"**So sorry — dozed off — what have I missed?"**

**He didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. **

James couldn't help but let a small, wicked smirk cross his face, but it was twisted with tension and anxiety to the point of only making him look slightly sick.

**Snape stepped forward. **

"**Just the man," he said. "The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."**

**Lockhart blanched.**

"**That's right, Gilderoy," chipped in Professor Sprout. "Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"**

"**I — well, I —" sputtered Lockhart.**

"**Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?" piped up Professor Flitwick.**

"**D-did I? I don't recall —"**

"**I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn't had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested," said Snape. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?"**

**Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues.**

"**I — I really never — you may have misunderstood —"**

James snorted. "God, if I'd had to listen to that for nine months, I'd have strangled him. About time someone called his bluff."

Scorpius was the only one who could really appreciate what sweet revenge this little moment was. Had the circumstances been different, he would have found it difficult not to laugh. But, glancing sideways at his friends, he noticed only a look of detached distain on Rose's face and had to wonder if Albus was even hearing the words at all.

"**We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy," said Professor McGonagall. "Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last."**

**Lockhart gazed desperately around him, but nobody came to the rescue. **

'_Course not, _Fred thought with mild satisfaction at seeing Lockhart's comeuppance. _They all can't stand him._

**He didn't look remotely handsome anymore. His lip was trembling, and in the absence of his usually toothy grin, he looked weak-chinned and feeble.**

"His true self emerges at last," Fred muttered under his breath.

"**V-very well," he said. "I'll — I'll be in my office, getting — getting ready."**

**And he left the room.**

"**Right," said Professor McGonagall, whose nostrils were flared, "that's got **_**him **_**out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories?"**

**The teachers rose and left, one by one.**

**It was probably the worst day of Harry's entire life. **

"I could understand that," Albus mumbled. If it was bad for them to hear about it now, when they knew that Ginny was perfectly safe, he couldn't imagine how much worse it had been when it was actually happening. They must have thought she was as good as dead. Albus drew his knees up to his chin and buried his face in them. He would have liked to run all the way back to the burrow and launch himself into his mother's arms like a little toddler, like Hugo had done a few hours earlier.

**He, Ron, Fred, and George sat together in a corner of the Gryffindor common room, unable to say anything to each other. Percy wasn't there. He had gone to send an owl to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, then shut himself up in his dormitory.**

**No afternoon ever lasted as long as that one, nor had Gryffindor Tower ever been so crowded, yet so quiet. Near sunset, Fred and George went up to bed, unable to sit there any longer.**

"**She knew something, Harry," said Ron, speaking for the first time since they had entered the wardrobe in the staffroom. "That's why she was taken. It wasn't some stupid thing about Percy at all. She'd found out something about the Chamber of Secrets. That must be why she was —" Ron rubbed his eyes frantically. "I mean, she was a pureblood. There can't be any other reason."**

Teddy nodded mutely in agreement. What had Ginny found out? What had gotten her into so much trouble?

**Harry could see the sun sinking, blood-red, below the skyline. This was the worst he had ever felt. If only there was something they could do. Anything.**

"There is," Hugo said. "You know where the chamber is and what's inside it. Tell someone! Go and get her!"

Fred cringed as he read the next lines.

"**Harry," said Ron. "D'you think there's any chance at all she's not — you know —"**

**Harry didn't know what to say. He couldn't see how Ginny could still be alive.**

"That's why they don't think there's anything they can do," said Teddy miserably.

"**D'you know what?" said Ron. "I think we should go and see Lockhart. Tell him what we know. He's going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and tell him it's a basilisk in there."**

"That is not what I meant when I said tell someone!" Hugo said in exasperation.

**Because Harry couldn't think of anything else to do, and because he wanted to be doing something, he agreed. The Gryffindors around them were so miserable, and felt so sorry for the Weasleys, that nobody tried to stop them as they got up, crossed the room, and left through the portrait hole.**

**Darkness was falling as they walked down to Lockhart's office. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on inside it. They could hear scraping, thumps, and hurried footsteps.**

"If he actually gets into the Chamber of Secrets, I'll ask Moaning Myrtle out on a date," said James.

**Harry knocked and there was a sudden silence from inside. Then the door opened the tiniest crack and they saw one of Lockhart's eyes peering through it.**

"**Oh — Mr. Potter — Mr. Weasley —" he said, opening the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment — if you would be quick —"**

"**Professor, we've got some information for you," said Harry. "We think it'll help you."**

James snorted disbelievingly.

"**Er — well — it's not terribly —" The side of Lockhart's face that they could see looked very uncomfortable. "I mean — well — all right —"**

**He opened the door and they entered.**

**His office had been almost completely stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade-green, lilac, midnightblue, had been hastily folded into one of them; books were jumbled untidily into the other. The photographs that had covered the walls were now crammed into boxes on the desk.**

"**Are you going somewhere?" said Harry.**

"**Er, well, yes," said Lockhart, ripping a life-size poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke and starting to roll it up. "Urgent call — unavoidable — got to go —"**

"Urgent call my arse," Fred said disgustedly. "The prat's skipping out."

"What'd I say?" James said pointedly.

"Well, he'd be certifiably insane if he actually tried to do all the things he boasts about," Teddy snorted.

"**What about my sister?" said Ron jerkily.**

"Tell that to the brother of the girl you're leaving for dead," Scorpius muttered, and at once anger flooded half of the faces around him.

"**Well, as to that — most unfortunate —" said Lockhart, avoiding their eyes as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I —"**

"I'm sure," James said darkly.

"Come on, mate, you don't really want your mum's life in the hands of _this guy_?" Fred said incredulously.

James muttered something about being the principle of the thing.

"**You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!" said Harry. "You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!"**

"**Well — I must say — when I took the job —" Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes. "Nothing in the job description — didn't expect —"**

"Yeah, why should a Defense against the Dark Arts _teacher _know anything about defense against the Dark Arts?" Rose said scathingly.

"**You mean you're **_**running away**_**? said Harry disbelievingly. "After all that stuff you did in your books —"**

"**Books can be misleading," said Lockhart delicately.**

"Or just complete bull," James muttered.

"**You wrote them!" Harry shouted.**

"**My dear boy," said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at Harry. "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think **_**I'd **_**done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on —"**

"Yeah, and the bloke who got rid of Voldemrot was a specky, scrawny kid with a great scar across his forehead," Fred couldn't stop himself from saying. "Better slap old Gilderoy on the cover of all his books, too, if you want 'em to sell."

"**So you've just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done?" said Harry incredulously.**

"**Harry, Harry," said Lockhart, shaking his head impatiently, "it's not nearly as simple as that. **

"Yes, it is," Rose sniffed.

It was far easier to be outraged over Lockhart than it was to be worried for Ginny, and they all latched onto the distraction.

**There was work involved. I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms. No, it's been a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog."**

"Yes, he's earned his stolen glory," said James, rolling his eyes.

Hugo suddenly wondered what his mother had thought when she found out Lockhart was a phony. Then he wondered why they still had Lockhart's books shoved in the corner of their library.

**He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them.**

"**Let's see," he said. "I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left."**

**He pulled out his wand and turned to them.**

"**Awfully sorry, boys, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you now. **

"Oi!" James and Hugo exclaimed indignantly.

"I don't think he understands exactly how valuable their memories are at the moment," Scorpius said a bit heatedly.

**Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book —"**

"And we'd never want that," James said sarcastically.

**Harry reached his wand just in time. Lockhart had barely raised his, when Harry bellowed, "**_**Expelliarmus**_**!"**

**Lockhart was blasted backward, falling over his trunk; his wand flew high into the air; Ron caught it, and flung it out of the open window.**

"Yes!" James, Fred, Hugo, Lily, and Scorpius all exclaimed.

"His signature move and everything," Fred smirked.

"Beaten by twelve-year-olds," James said with satisfaction.

"To be fair, they weren't ordinary twelve-year-olds," Rose pointed out, looking gleeful nonetheless.

"**Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," said Harry furiously, **

"Actually, it probably was the most important thing Snape ever taught him," Rose said thoughtfully. "It kind of saved the world."

"Maybe that's how you got your name, Al," James suggested.

Albus ignored him.

**kicking Lockhart's trunk aside. Lockhart was looking up at him, feeble once more. Harry was still pointing his wand at him.**

"**What d'you want me to do?" said Lockhart weakly. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."**

"You're in luck," said James less than kindly. "You just found – and tried to wipe the memory of – the only two people in the entire school who've figured it out."

"**You're in luck," said Harry, forcing Lockhart to his feet at wandpoint. "We think **_**we **_**know where it is. **_**And **_**what's inside it. Let's go."**

"And that's how they ended up in the Chamber of Secrets," Teddy said in a carrying whisper.

And the outrage with Lockhart that had temporarily blocked out the tension and fear of the situation seemed to evaporate just like that.

**They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, **

Lily shivered at the mention of the messages. _Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever…_

She hoped more than ever that those words no longer stained a wall in Hogwarts. She doubted that she'd be able to get anywhere near it without feeling sick.

**to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.**

**They sent Lockhart in first. Harry was pleased to see that he was shaking.**

**Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.**

"**Oh, it's you," she said when she saw Harry. "What do you want this time?"**

"**To ask you how you died," said Harry.**

"Such a cheerful topic," James said under his breath.

**Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.**

James blinked. "Apparently, to her, it is."

"And that's your future date," Fred whispered.

James opened his mouth in mild horror, but Fred returned to the book before he could protest, grinning slightly.

"**Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a **_**boy**_** speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then —" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining.**

"**I **_**died.**_**"**

"**How?" said Harry.**

"**No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away. . . ." **

"So that's what it's like to die," Teddy whispered, regretting voicing this thought when he heard Lily whimper.

"That's just what it's like to be killed by a Basilisk," Scorpius pointed out.

"Can we stop talking about what it feels like to die?" Lily asked. It was too much, coupled with the message about her mother's skeleton.

Teddy reached over to run a comforting hand over the top of her head as Fred kept reading.

**She looked dreamily at Harry. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."**

"**Where exactly did you see the eyes?" said Harry.**

"**Somewhere there," said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.**

**Harry and Ron hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face. **

**It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Harry saw it: Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.**

"So that's it," Albus whispered, speaking for the first time in a while. "That's the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets."

"A sink in a girl's bathroom?" James asked, mustering up some incredulity for this little detail so that he did not have to think about what was coming, about what he would have to hear about his parents. "I'd have thought Slytherin would pick a grander place for his Chamber."

"I don't think he picked it," said Rose thoughtfully. "I mean, there wasn't exactly indoor plumbing a thousand years ago, was there? I think it just ended up there as the castle grew and shifted."

"Makes it harder to find," James shrugged.

"How _did _Voldemort find it?" Scorpius wondered.

"He left no inch of the school unsearched, apparently," Teddy said absently.

There was a bit of a pause as Fred waited for someone else to say something, to put off the moment when they would find out what had happened to Ginny in that Chamber, but no one seemed to have anything else to say, so he reluctantly began reading again.

"**That tap's never worked," said Myrtle brightly as he tried to turn it.**

"**Harry," said Ron. "Say something. Something in Parseltongue."**

"Thought so," Teddy mumbled.

"**But —" Harry thought hard. The only times he'd ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when he'd been faced with a real snake. He stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.**

Involuntarily, Albus shivered a little.

"**Open up," he said.**

**He looked at Ron, who shook his head.**

"**English," he said.**

"It must be weird to not even know what language is coming out of your mouth," Fred commented.

**Harry looked back at the snake, willing himself to believe it was alive. If he moved his head, the candlelight made it look as though it were moving.**

Rose tightened her hand briefly on Albus's fingers this time when she felt him shiver again.

"**Open up," he said.**

**Except that the words weren't what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, **

This time, Albus shook his head a little, disliking the image of his father sounding like a snake. It was creepy.

**and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.**

**Harry heard Ron gasp and looked up again. He had made up his mind what he was going to do.**

"There's no way he _wouldn't_," Lily said without any uncertainty. "It's _Mum_."

"I don't think that makes a big difference at the moment," said Teddy. "I think he would have gone no matter who it was down there. That's just how Harry is. He'll risk his life, everything, for his best friend's sister, for someone he doesn't even know, for someone he doesn't even like, probably. It makes the rest of us crazy worrying about him, but it would make him crazy not to do anything."

"**I'm going down there," he said.**

**He couldn't not go, not now they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.**

"And there is," Hugo said forcefully.

Pride burst in James's chest at his father's thoughts. Not because he was brave, but because, as Teddy said, he was willing to risk everything for his best mate's little sister, a girl he barely knew. It was things like that that James admired the most about his father, though if anyone asked him (and they did. A lot.) he said something impressive, like he was most proud of how his father had saved the world when he was a baby, or all the trouble he got into at school, the things people expected to hear. But this… this particular heroic quality, it was something James prided the most, perhaps because he was afraid that, should the time come, he would discover he didn't have it.

Teddy had it. He had become an Auror after all. Al had it, James could just tell. Al might be afraid of the dark and of snakes and Lily's pet rabbit and just about every other thing that moved and half the things that didn't, but James knew that when it came down to it, Albus could set aside those fears. How else had he made it into Gryffindor? It was just one of those similarities between his father and his brother that he could see as easily as the green eyes. Lily even had it in her fiery, Weasley way. It was just a spark in her now, but it would ignite.

But James didn't know if he had it. He couldn't see it in himself like he could see it in his brothers and sister. And so it was that quality above anything, that _nobility_ that he both envied and admired more than anything else.

"**Me too," said Ron.**

"Well, there's no way he _wouldn't_," Rose said proudly. "Not if Harry's going and Ginny's already down there."

Ron had it too, James thought. Not the same way or in quite as much force as his father did, but it was there, nonetheless.

**There was a pause.**

"**Well, you hardly seem to need me," said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just —"**

"Way to be the adult," Rose muttered, rolling her eyes.

**He put his hand on the door knob, but Ron and Harry both pointed their wands at him.**

"**You can go first," Ron snarled.**

"Why are they taking him?" Lily wondered.

"Well, he doesn't get to just walk away after trying to run out on them," James said harshly.

**White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening. **

"**Boys," he said, his voice feeble. "Boys, what good will it do?" **

**Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.**

"**I really don't think —" he started to say, but Ron gave him a push, and he slid out of sight. Harry followed quickly. He lowered himself slowly into the pipe, then let go.**

**It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. **

"The slide of doom," Fred said dramatically.  
"Don't say that," Lily told him, shivering. "That's both my parents and Ron down there now…"

Fred gave her an apologetic look.

**He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind him he could hear Ron, thudding slightly at the curves.**

"Dad'll always be right behind him," Rose murmured, smiling slightly.

**And then, just as he had begun to worry about what would happen when he hit the ground, the pipe leveled out, and he shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. Lockhart was getting to his feet a little ways away, covered in slime and white as a ghost. Harry stood aside as Ron came whizzing out of the pipe, too.**

"**We must be miles under the school," said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.**

"**Under the lake, probably," said Ron, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls.**

**All three of them turned to stare into the darkness ahead.**

"_**Lumos**_**!" Harry muttered to his wand and it lit again. "C'mon," he said to Ron and Lockhart, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.**

The tension had begun to build at an alarming rate again. There were no distractions, no putting it off any longer. They were going to find out, because they had started reading this book, which mean that they had to finish.

**The tunnel was so dark that they could only see a little distance ahead. Their shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wandlight.**

"**Remember," Harry said quietly as they walked cautiously forward, "any sign of movement, close your eyes right away. . . ."**

"It could be anywhere," Albus said in a slightly higher voice than usual. He shifted, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the dark trees. Was that slithering sound just the wind in the leaves?

Rose reached around him and grabbed the corner of their blanket, bringing it up, around Al's shoulders. Scorpius did the same with his end and the three of them huddled together, the blanket pressed protectively against their backs and Teddy's blue fire in front of them.

**But the tunnel was quiet as the grave, **

"Please don't think things like that, Daddy," Lily said in a small voice.

**and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud **_**crunch **_**as Ron stepped on what turned out to be a rat's skull. **

Rose made a face.

**Harry lowered his wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny might look like if they found her,**

Albus and James both shuddered violently at this thought and Lily let out another whimper, hiding her face in the blanket. Teddy felt his stomach turn. Ginny may not be the _closest_ thing to a mother Teddy had, but she was close enough.

**Harry led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.**

"**Harry — there's something up there —" said Ron hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder.**

Albus stiffened as the rest leaned forward slightly, holding their breath.

**They froze, watching. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.**

James swore under his breath. Teddy stared hard at the book, as though he could see through it and read what had happened. Lily found Hugo's elbow and clamped her fingers around it. Albus swallowed hard. _I will not freak out. I will not freak out. I will not freak out…_

"**Maybe it's asleep," he breathed, glancing back at the other two. Lockhart's hands were pressed over his eyes. Harry turned back to look at the thing, his heart beating so fast it hurt.**

**Very slowly, his eyes as narrow as he could make them and still see, Harry edged forward, his wand held high.**

"Careful," Teddy could not stop himself form muttering. It did not matter that this had already happened, nor that the twelve-year-old boy he was warning was usually the one saying that to him. All he could see was his short, scrawny, twelve-year-old godfather approaching a massive snake that could kill him with one look.

**The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.**

Albus swallowed hard. When he was about eight, James had thought it would be amusing to hide the snake skin he had found in the backyard in Albus's bed. Needless to say, it had not helped his fear of snakes. And now, the feel of those smooth coils against his bare leg was all he could thing about.

"**Blimey," said Ron weakly.**

"You said it, Dad," Hugo mumbled. Imagine if they came across the real thing? And Hugo was sure they would.

**There was a sudden movement behind them. Gilderoy Lockhart's knees had given way.**

"Wimp," James muttered.

Albus, however, couldn't blame him one bit.

"**Get up," said Ron sharply, pointing his wand at Lockhart. Lockhart got to his feet — then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground.**

"Hey!" Hugo said angrily.

**Harry jumped forward, but too late — Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron's wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.**

"Oh no," Rose groaned. "His magic is already dangerous enough. With a broken wand… " she trailed off, gulping.

"**The adventure ends here, boys!" he said. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two **_**tragically **_**lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body — **

Lily let out a small cry this time that had Teddy moving over to put an arm around her. Albus nearly gagged. James whitened even more.

"She's fine," he whispered, more to remind himself than reassure the others.

**say good-bye to your memories!"**

**He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled, "**_**Obliviate**_**!"**

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, anticipating the backfire.

**The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Harry flung his arms over his head and ran, slipping over the coils of snake skin, out of the way of great chunks of tunnel ceiling that were thundering to the floor. Next moment, he was standing alone, gazing at a solid wall of broken rock.**

"Damn," James said softly.

"Please let it have backfired," Fred begged, closing his eyes and turning his face skyward. "I won't even ask for anything for my birthday if Lockhart whipped his own memory!" =

"**Ron!" he shouted. "Are you okay? Ron!"**

"**I'm here!" came Ron's muffled voice from behind the rockfall. "I'm okay — this git's not, though — he got blasted by the wand —"**

"Serves him right," Lily muttered from Teddy's side.

**There was a dull thud and a loud "ow!" It sounded as though Ron had just kicked Lockhart in the shins.**

Fred could not help himself from snickering, and after a moment James joined in.

"I've been waiting for someone to just kick him all book!"

"**What now?" Ron's voice said, sounding desperate. "We can't get through — it'll take ages. . . ."**

"Oh, no," Rose groaned again, realizing what that meant.

"Isn't that just our luck," Teddy muttered.

"Dad's got to go alone," James realized, and suddenly he was scared. "Why's he always got to do these things alone?" he demanded.

**Harry looked up at the tunnel ceiling. Huge cracks had appeared in it. He had never tried to break apart anything as large as these rocks by magic, and now didn't seem a good moment to try — what if the whole tunnel caved in?**

"Yes, this is not the place for experimental magic," Rose breathed, even though she hated the idea of her uncle proceeding alone. Maybe her father _couldn't _always be right behind him.

**There was another thud and another "ow!" from behind the rocks. **

"Kick him some more, Uncle Ron," Fred encouraged before reading on.

**They were wasting time. Ginny had already been in the Chamber of Secrets for hours. . . . **

"Don't remind us," James muttered, that dread creeping up on him. What had happened in those hours? _Who was the bloody heir this time?_

**Harry knew there was only one thing to do.**

"**Wait there," he called to Ron. "Wait with Lockhart. I'll go on. . . . If I'm not back in an hour . . ."**

**There was a very pregnant pause.**

"**I'll try and shift some of this rock," said Ron, who seemed to be trying to keep his voice steady. "So you can — can get back through. And, Harry —"**

Rose was reminded of the end of the last book, the way her mother had had to send Harry off alone. How difficult it must be to watch your friend disappear, maybe never to see them alive again… she shuddered. That must have been one of the most agonizing waits of her father's life. She wondered if he had even thought his sister and best friend were coming back.

Then she wondered how often her parents had had to face situations like this. It was a strength she had not fully seen or appreciated in her parents until this point. Going off to face Merlin-knew-what alone was difficult and terrifying and required courage in the greatest amounts, but so did letting someone else go, she thought. She gripped Albus's hand and Scorpius's wrist in the dark and ,not for the first, nor the last time, hoped that she would never have to know how exactly that felt.

"**See you in a bit," said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his shaking voice.**

"Good luck there, mate," Scorpius mumbled.

**And he set off alone past the giant snake skin.**

"Why does that sound extremely ominous?" Albus said nervously.

"Because the owner of that skin is probably waiting somewhere ahead of him," James told his brother, and Albus felt as if an ice cube had just slipped into his stomach.

**Soon the distant noise of Ron straining to shift the rocks was gone. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. **

And so did every single person in that clearing. What sort of state would Ginny be in? What beast – human and otherwise – was waiting for Harry at the end of the tunnel?

**And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds. **

_The doors of doom_, Fred thought, but this time wisely kept his mouth shut.

**Harry approached, his throat very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive.**

Albus was not the only one to shiver at this description.

**He could guess what he had to do. He cleared his throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.**

"_**Open,**_**" said Harry, in a low, faint hiss.**

**The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside.**

Fred was extremely glad to close the book and drop it. He did not want to read out loud what happened next. Fear seemed to have swarmed around all of them in the dark. What exactly had Harry just walked into?

**A/N: Dun, dun, dun! Suspenseful, I know. Sorry about that! Tell us what you think please! We adore your thoughts and opinions! Also, if you're curious, do you remember that other story I mentioned a while back? The one I (Morning Lilies) was working on that had to do with this story? It was a series of post-DH snapshots that exists in the same 'world' I guess as this one? Well, I think I'm going to post Lily's reaction to seeing the faint remains of those messages on the wall as part of that story. Not sure when I'll get around to it, but probably soon-ish, so if you wanted to read it, keep an eye out. Thanks! :D **


	15. The Heir of Slytherin

**Disclaimer: What do you think? **

**A/N: That took way too long. Sorry! You know, premier activities occupied most of last week. Watching eight Harry Potter movies takes a LOT of time! But the epilog of the movie got us in the mood to get a move on with this chapter! Oh my god, they were all so cute! I'm so sad that Teddy didn't make the cut, though. :'( **

**But anyway, about this chapter. Okay, it's not super heavy on the comedy. The last few haven't been, have they? Thing is, this stuff is really terrible, and I just don't think it's the mood for jokes. Sorry if you're into the lighter parts of this series, but I hate it when people dilute the realness and seriousness of these stories with jokes. Ginny was basically emotionally raped. I don't think the kids would be in a very joking sort of mood after that. I'm sure not when I'm writing it. So the humor will return, just not really in this chapter. **

Chapter Seventeen

The Heir of Slytherin

Without a word, Scorpius leaned around Rose and Albus and grabbed the book Fred had just dropped. He knew he had to be the one to read this chapter. He was the only one detached enough to get through it. As he flipped to the correct page, he looked from Rose and Albus, who were sitting white-faced beside him, Rose's hand gripping Al's so tightly he was sure Albus had lost feeling in his fingers, to James and Fred, who both sat stony faced, staring into the flickering blue flames, to the other side of the semi-circle where Hugo and Lily sat with their shoulders pressed together. Teddy had moved over to put an arm around Lily, but his expression was far away.

Scorpius wondered what it was like for him to hear about this. It wasn't _his _parents, after all, but from what he'd gathered over the last year and especially the last couple of days, it might as well be. He didn't quite understand what sort of connection existed between Teddy and Al's parents. But whatever it was, it was obviously a strong one.

Scorpius looked down at the book and took a deep breath before he began to read.

**Chapter Seventeen**

**The Heir of Slytherin**

"Finally," James growled. "We're going to find out who this bastard is."

He wanted to know who exactly had tried to kill his aunt and kidnapped his mother.

"The Heir is probably Voldemort," Teddy said absently.

"Yeah, but whoever is using his diary to open the chamber is as good as the Heir. There's only so much instructions and memories can do," said James in a low voice, not taking his eyes off the flames.

**He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.**

Scorpius was careful to keep his voice even and monotone with the hope of reducing some of the fear that was leaping like little flames around them all.

**His heart beating very fast, Harry stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? **

"Anywhere," Hugo whispered into the heavy silence outside of Scorpius's voice.

**And where was Ginny?**

Everyone was holding their breath. Any moment now, they were sure to find out.

**He pulled out his wand and moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir.**

Albus's heart was hammering so hard, he might have been in the Chamber with his father. The imagery was so vivid, he could practically see the serpentine columns looming in front of him.

James was staring fixedly at the fire, but his fists were clenched so tight around the edge of the blanket that his knuckles were white. Lily was squeezing her arms around her knees, but determinedly kept her head up, looking at the book. Teddy appeared impassive, but his heart was pounding almost as hard as Albus's.

**Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall. **

**Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown,**

Scorpius stopped short, feeling as though he were teetering on the edge of a cliff. Everyone was staring at him. James had jerked his head up, Fred was biting his lip hard. They knew what was coming.

Fighting to keep his voice calm and even, Scorpius continued quietly.

**lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.**

Teddy swallowed hard and tightened his grip around Lily. She rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. Part of her had hoped, vainly she knew, that McGonagall had been wrong and there was some other explanation for her mother's disappearance. James could feel himself shaking slightly. Albus pressed his forehead to his knees.

Scorpius was surprised how hard it was for even him to read this. He had hardly even seen Ginny. He knew this little girl in the book better than he knew his friend's mother. But the fact that this was happening at all to an innocent girl was all it really took.

"_**Ginny**_**!" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees. "Ginny — don't be dead — please don't be dead —" **

Lily gave a little squeak at these words. Hugo put a hand on her arm, but his insides had turned to ice.

For Albus, this scene was far too easy to picture, and it didn't matter that his mother and father were eleven and twelve and had no sort of relationship at all or even dreamed they ever would, it was still his father kneeling beside his motionless, crumpled mother and pleading her to still be alive.

**He flung his wand aside, **

Teddy let out a strangled sort of groan and put his face in his free hand. He wished he could glue that wand into the twelve-year-old Harry's hand.

**grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over. Her face was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be —**

"What did they do to her?" Hugo asked in a squeak. He could feel Lily shaking next to him.

"I don't think I want to know," James said jerkily.

Albus was squeezing Rose's fingers back now, his face hidden in his drawn-up knees.

"**Ginny, please wake up," Harry muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.**

"Mummy," Lily whimpered.

"Yeah, we know, shut up, Lily," James said tightly. He could hear from his sister's voice that she was close to tears and it wasn't helping him at all.

"Leave her alone," Hugo snapped scowling in James's direction, as Lily turned fiery eyes on her brother.

"Stay out of it, shrimp,"

"He's almost taller than you, you git."

"But all I've got to do is get a spider and he'll go running to Mummy though," James jeered, making Hugo flush with both anger and embarrassment.

"Guys!" Teddy interrupted before the pointless argument born of stretched nerves and high emotions could go any farther. "Not the time."

James, Hugo, and Lily settled back down into the cold dread that seemed to have settled permanently around them and Scorpius kept reading.

"**She won't wake," said a soft voice.**

And that seemed to freeze every single one of them. So this was it, wasn't it? This was who was opening the Chamber, the one who had taken Ginny. No one breathed a sound as Scorpius read.

**Harry jumped and spun around on his knees.**

**A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. **

"Who –?" Hugo started to ask, but Scorpius read over him, slight confusion and growing fear buzzing in his hears.

**He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him —**

"**Tom — **_**Tom Riddle**_**?"**

Teddy jerked bolt-upright, Lily slipping from under his arm.

"_What_?"

"How?" Rose asked desperately. "How is he out of the diary?"

Teddy shook his head, feeling as though his stomach had dropped about ten floors. He had known that Voldemort was connected to this, knew that it was likely under his instruction that whoever was opening the Chamber this time was doing it, but he had thought his influence was limited to a creepy voice inside a book. If he was out – if he had been down there with Ginny all this time –

He couldn't even think what that meant. And now Harry was facing him. His wand thrown aside. Perfect.

"Why does he say she won't wake?" Albus asked in a whisper. And that sent new stabs of fear shooting up the others' spines.

Scorpius returned to the book.

**Riddle nodded, not taking his eyes off Harry's face.**

James shivered. He wondered if this form of Voldemort – this teenage boy – knew about Harry and that it was his older self's ambition to murder him.

"**What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Harry said desperately. "She's not — she's not — ?"**

"**She's still alive," said Riddle. "But only just."**

"What the _bloody hell _did he do?" Fred growled this time.

"No one knows, Fred, and no one _wants_ to know," James snapped, unable to take thinking about it.

"I want to know so I can stop imagining all the horrible things it might be," Fred said grimly.

"I don't think the actual answer will stop that," James said with a twinge of pain in his voice.

Fred looked apologetic, but James had turned away, staring again at the fire.

**Harry stared at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not a day older than sixteen.**

"**Are you a ghost?" Harry said uncertainly.**

"I get the feeling he's a lot more sinister," Teddy said darkly.

"**A memory," said Riddle quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."**

**He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Harry had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, Harry wondered how it had got there — but there were more pressing matters to deal with.**

"Whoever _did _all this must have left it," said James, almost to himself. He got the feeling that if Voldemort was around, even in memory-form, no sane person would stick around. They must have left his mother down there to rot.

"**You've got to help me, Tom," **

Scorpius almost laughed a hysterical, humorless laugh.

"He doesn't know," he realized, and he could see the answer etched in the new fear on the others' faces.

Teddy had gone bone-white. Harry didn't even know to be wary of this memory-Riddle.

**Harry said, raising Ginny's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk . . . **

"Oh, he knows," Teddy whispered darkly.

**I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment. . . . Please, help me —"**

**Riddle didn't move. Harry, sweating, managed to hoist Ginny half off the floor, **

"That's not good," Rose muttered chewing her lip. "He can't even lift her. There's no way he can get her out of there if Riddle decides to fight."

**and bent to pick up his wand again.**

**But his wand had gone.**

Teddy swore, burying his face in his hands. Fred and James looked at each other, gaping. Albus felt like his stomach had dropped straight out of him.

"Harry," Rose groaned, looking terrified.

"**Did you see — ?"**

**He looked up. Riddle was still watching him — twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers.**

Teddy swore again even more vehemently.

"You didn't see that coning?" Rose asked with only slight incredulity.

"I had hopes," Teddy muttered.

"**Thanks," said Harry, stretching out his hand for it.**

"Not trying to help you out, mate," Teddy moaned, hating how naïve Harry was. Usually he liked seeing Harry more innocent and young, but not here, not now.

**A smile curled the corners of Riddle's mouth. **

"Now that's scary," Fred whispered, but no one took any notice.

**He continued to stare at Harry, twirling the wand idly.**

"**Listen," said Harry urgently, his knees sagging with Ginny's dead weight. **

"He must really have been a pipsqueak back then if he couldn't even lift someone as big as Lil," Fred said in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood. It had no effect at all.

"_**We've got to go**_**! If the basilisk comes —"**

"It will get a LOT worse," Rose said tensely.

"Which is saying something," Hugo added unhelpfully.

"**It won't come until it is called," said Riddle calmly.**

**Harry lowered Ginny back onto the floor, unable to hold her up any longer.**

"**What d'you mean?" he said. "Look, give me my wand, I might need it —"**

**Riddle's smile broadened.**

"**You won't be needing it," he said.**

"I beg to differ," said Teddy. He felt like he was on one of those muggle rollercoasters Harry and Ginny took him to when he was younger, approaching the highest peak, waiting, teetering on edge for the drop, for Tom Riddle to get bored with playing around. He had two people Teddy loved at his mercy. And Tom Riddle had no mercy.

**Harry stared at him.**

"**What d'you mean, I won't be — ?"**

"**I've waited a long time for this, Harry Potter," said Riddle. "For the chance to see you. To speak to you."**

James's eyes widened. He knew. Damn. It was like watching a deadly snake circle a couple of little rabbits. And his parents were the rabbits.

"How does he know?" Rose muttered. "He's a memory from decades before Harry was even born…"

"**Look," said Harry, losing patience, "I don't think you get it. We're in the **_**Chamber of Secrets. **_**We can talk later —"**

"I think you're the one that doesn't get it, Dad," James groaned. "This is _Voldemort_ you're talking to. He can _kill _you _now_!"

"Don't say that," Rose begged.

"**We're going to talk now," said Riddle, still smiling broadly, and he pocketed Harry's wand.**

**Harry stared at him. There was something very funny going on here. . . .**

"Not funny at all," Lily mumbled.

"**How did Ginny get like this?" he asked slowly.**

"**Well, that's an interesting question," said Riddle pleasantly.**

Albus flinched. There was nothing pleasant about it, he was sure.

"**And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger."**

"What?" James choked. "What does he mean? Someone stunned her or something because she found something out! They took her down there to stop her spilling! _You_ made her like that!"

A sick feeling was in Teddy's stomach. He remembered Ginny looking horrified when she saw the diary in Harry's things. Had she come across it, somehow? Was that what she had discovered? The reason the Heir (or whatever he was) had taken her?

Scorpius read on, his voice as emotionless as possible.

"**What are you talking about?" said Harry.**

"**The diary," said Riddle. "**_**My **_**diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes — **

"No," Rose said in horror, the pieces slowly beginning to click together.

"Mum – Mum's been writing to him all year?" Lily asked, voice rising shrilly. "Telling him _everything_?"

Teddy felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. This didn't mean – it _couldn't _mean what he thought.

"All year?" James repeated hollowly.

Scorpius almost hated to keep reading, to have to confirm what he was almost certain was going on. If Ginny had had Riddle's diary, that must mean… but she wouldn't have opened the Chamber. It didn't make sense.

**how her brothers **_**tease **_**her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how" — Riddle's eyes glinted — "how she didn't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would **_**ever**_** like her. . . ."**

"Bastard," James whispered, he was shaking, but not with fear anymore. Fury was rushing through him.

With a sick jolt, Rose thought of the little pink book she had hidden at the bottom of her trunk. All her thoughts, secrets, fears… what a violation it would be for someone to use them against her. She felt tears prick her eyes for her aunt.

**All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them.**

"I think he scares me more than the monster he becomes," Lily whispered huddling close to Teddy. "He's _human_ but he's so _dangerous_."

"**It's very **_**boring, **_**having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply **_**loved **_**me. **

It was like being force-fed poison. Even as dull and undramatic as Scorpius tried to make his voice, the words seemed to fall like venomous petals, the truth settling over them as softly and ice-cold as snow. Albus shivered hard at the last words. Rose dropped his hand and wrapped her arm around him, resting her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes as a few hot tears dripped down her cheeks.

James felt sick, and a glance at the others' faces told him he wasn't the only one. It was somehow a million times more frightening that Voldemort had wormed his way into his mother's life like a creeping vine, a weed, lying in wait to strangle her, luring her close with sweet scents and innocent buds.

Lily had finally buried her face in Teddy's side. She was biting her lip hard, but she couldn't stop her own tears from leaking out, dampening Teddy's shirt. She hated the way Tom Riddle had lied, pretended to be kind, _tricked _her mother. An old phrase she had heard Hermione use came into her head: a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Hugo couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe this had happened to Ginny. It was worse than they had ever imagined. It wasn't a mere few hours to haunt her nightmares, she had been manipulated, fooled. It was almost painful to listen to what Scorpius read next.

_**No one's ever**__**understood me like you, Tom. **_**. . . **_**I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in. **_**. . . **_**It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket. **_**. . ."**

Teddy closed his eyes, grimacing. Ginny had _trusted _him. And the worst part was he could see how easy it might have been for her to fall into that trap. She would have been a first year, not knowing anybody but her brothers who were preoccupied with their own friends. She must have been lonely and it would have been such a comfort to simply open a book and find a friend she could tell anything to. So young, so naïve…. Not after this, Teddy thought with a pang.

It was strange that he felt the need to keep the children in these books innocent. They had already grown up. He knew better than anyone that their innocence was long gone. But it was more difficult than he had anticipated to watch it being stolen from them.

**Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. **

It was this that snapped James. He pounded his fist as hard as he could into the ground, so hard that it jarred his knuckles. He hardly cared. He did it again and again, imagining that his fist was hitting Tom Riddle's face. Sick – twisted – evil – bastard. She was just a little girl, and he was laughing. Laughing at how his act had roped her in so well. How he had _used _her. How he was planning to _destroy _her. James did not want to think where this was going, what it meant. He didn't realize there was a grip on his wrist, holding his arm back, until Fred's voice broke into his thoughts.

"James! You're gonna break your hand, mate," he grunted, grappling with James to stop him pounding the ground again.

James let his arm fall limp, and Fred let go of him and sat back. No one said anything, but he felt Fred's hand grip his shoulder hard as Scorpius went on.

**It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck.**

"**If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. **

Albus cringed. James growled. Scorpius winced as he pushed on.

**So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted. . . . I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of **_**my **_**secrets, to start pouring a little of **_**my **_**soul back into **_**her **_**. . ."**

Albus really thought he might be sick at that thought. Teddy gathered Lily up in his arms, holding her tightly as if that could somehow protect the little girl in the book.

"No one deserves to hold his secrets," Rose whispered, more tears slipping down her face.

Hugo shuddered violently. No, no one deserved having _his _soul inside them… if he had a soul. Hugo pictured some evil, black, tar-like substance seeping through his aunt's veins and shuddered again.

He jumped when he felt someone fling an arm around him. Fred didn't look at him, but stared hard into the fire, one hand on James' s shoulder, the other arm around his little cousin, since Lily was a bit preoccupied for them to use the buddy system like they usually did.

"**What d'you mean?" said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry.**

"**Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?" said Riddle softly. **

They had all guessed. But it did not make hearing it out loud any easier.

"**Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat."**

"No!" Albus whispered in a strangled voice.

Rose tightened her grip around him, crying silently. They had never guessed, would not have dreamed it in a hundred years that this had happened to Ginny.

"How?" Hugo whimpered, sounding much younger than he was.

No one answered. Scorpius just kept reading, wishing he didn't have to.

"**No," Harry whispered.**

"**Yes," said Riddle, calmly. **

And that word was like twisting the knife, digging the blow deeper.

"**Of course, she didn't **_**know **_**what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries . . . far more interesting, they became.**

Albus did not want to hear what his mother had written, what she had thought. He buried his head in his arms, trying to block out the words, but he could still hear Scorpius's voice, carrying in the dead silence around them.

**. . . **_**Dear Tom,**_**" he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, "**_**I think I'm**__**losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I**__**don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did**__**on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint**__**all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm**__**not myself. I think he suspects me. **_**. . . **_**There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad**_**. . . . **_**I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom**_**!"**

Half of those listening flinched at the last sentence. They, of course, had figured out that it had been Ginny, but to hear it, to hear the panic that rang out even through the decades, was something else.

Teddy felt almost washed away by a sudden shame and guilt. All year, Ginny had slowly been coming to the terrifying realization that she was the one doing all these horrible things. She had been scared, that much was obvious, not understanding what was happening and then not wanting to, drowning in her own silent horror. And no one had noticed.

He knew he had not been there, could not have done a thing even if he had caught on sooner. But all the little hints, the oddities he and the rest had put down to Ginny being young or scared, all came flooding back. She had had a diary – nearly left it behind. Percy had bullied her into taking pepper-up potion. The attack on Mrs. Norris had upset her far more than anyone else. She had been having nightmares. The list went on, every action over the past several weeks in the book had seemed off.

And yet Teddy had not suspected, not even worried over her other than the odd moment of sympathy that her first year had been so dreadful. He had had no idea. And he could not even bring himself to be angry at Ron and his brothers for _being _there and taking no notice, because he was guilty of the same obliviousness.

**Harry's fists were clenched, the nails digging deep into his palms.**

"**It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary," said Riddle. **

Albus wondered, with another sick jolt of the stomach, how long that was. How long had his mother unknowingly poured her soul into that book, fed Voldemort himself? And then, what a crushing blow that must have been to realize that the very thing she was clinging to to keep her sanity, keep her afloat, was what was dragging her under, all the while crooning in her ear that it would be okay. And when she finally did make the realization, the surface would surely be too far away….

"**But she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. **

She fought it off, Albus thought with only the tinniest shoot of relief. His mother had been in that girl somewhere, fighting back no matter how bleak it might have seemed, how hard it might have been. For surely Tom Riddle was still pretending to be a comforting presence, easy for her to convince herself that she was being paranoid.

**And that's where **_**you **_**came in, Harry. You found it, and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was **_**you, **_**the very person I was most anxious to meet. . . ."**

James felt another shiver run through him. Both of his parents had been taken in by Tom Riddle. They had both trusted that damn diary, and had it not been stolen from Harry, it might have been easy for Riddle to catch him under his spell, too, to perhaps convince him to walk to his own death.

"**And why did you want to meet me?" said Harry. Anger was coursing through him, and it was an effort to keep his voice steady.**

That's good, Fred thought, but he could not find his voice to speak the words, even to reassure the others. If Harry was angry, he wasn't scared, and he would fight. And he would win, because no one Fred had ever met had more determination, more _will _to win than his uncle did when he was angry enough. It was rare to see it in him now and mostly through these books that Fred had noticed it, but he was confident (not only because he knew both Harry and Ginny made it out with the capability of never letting on that this had even happened) that Tom Riddle was in for a surprise. How else could someone survive the killing curse _twice _if they did not possess a superhuman will to live?

"**Well, you see, Ginny told me all about you, Harry," said Riddle. "Your whole **_**fascinating **_**history." His eyes roved over the lightning scar on Harry's forehead, and their expression grew hungrier.**

Damn, James thought. He knew. Everything. That meant he was half as restricted as last time they'd met and twice as bloodthirsty towards Harry.

"**I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust —"**

That wasn't what gained his trust, Scorpius thought, though he doubted he needed to point it out. And he certainly wasn't about to say what he thought had really turned Harry to Riddle's favor: How similar they seemed, both in story and even in looks. Hagrid's blame had been more of a hindrance to Riddle's cause. But of course how was he to know what exactly Hagrid meant to Harry?

"**Hagrid's my friend," said Harry, his voice now shaking. "And you framed him, didn't you? I thought you made a mistake, but —"**

**Riddle laughed his high laugh again.**

"**It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so **_**brave, **_**school prefect, model student . . . on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, **

It occurred very dimly and distantly to Teddy that Riddle was showing his ignorance of the Wizarding world here. Werewolves didn't have cubs. At least, not the kind you could raise under a bed. Teddy knew better than anyone.

**sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls . . . but I admit, even **_**I **_**was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought **_**someone **_**must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. **

_You'd think_, Hugo thought bitterly. And he wasn't the only one.

**It had taken **_**me **_**five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance . . . as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power!**

_Isn't he the arrogant one_, Rose thought. But like the others, her voice didn't seem to work. No one wanted to interrupt the story. They wanted it over with as soon as possible, to see how everything was okay again.

"**Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed. . . . Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did. . . ."**

James actually opened his mouth, bursting with the impulse to jump on this weakness in Riddle's boasting. But his father had beat him to it, taking the words right out of his mouth.

"**I bet Dumbledore saw right through you," said Harry, his teeth gritted.**

"**Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled," said Riddle carelessly. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."**

"That's beyond sick," Rose whispered shakily, but her voice seemed loud, the first in several minutes to break the thickening silence. The statement was wholly inadequate, but she felt the need to say something, could not allow something as twisted as murder to be passed off as 'noble work'.

"**Well, you haven't finished it," said Harry triumphantly. "No one's died this time, not even the cat. In a few hours the Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was Petrified will be all right again —"**

"**Haven't I already told you," said Riddle quietly, "that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been — **_**you.**_**"**

Scorpius paused. They knew it had been coming, but it was like the snake coiling for the lunge, eyes fixed in a stare that meant certain death to its prey. The moment seemed to become all the more dangerous and the fear that had yielded to horror and shock with the explanation of Ginny's true first year was quickly rising in them all again.

**Harry stared at him.**

"**Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? **

So his mother had known, James thought, coming to a similar realization to Teddy and Albus. She had, by that point, known it was her, but had been helpless to stop it. No, that wasn't true. She had managed to break the diary's grip over her, escape its enchantment. Only for it to fall into the wrong hands and been driven to steeling it back, lest the ever-increasing intensity of the 'witch hunt' (which no one had seemed to imagine was actually a 'witch' hunt. Who had suspected an innocent little first year girl?) to be directed at her. She had been panicking and terrified, not just of what she was doing, but what would happen to her if someone figured it out, silently suffocating under it all in the background and no one had noticed a thing.

**So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back.**

Fred looked over at Rose, and when he spoke, his voice was shaded with a weak horror.

"Looks like we were both right, eh Rosie? Ginny _was _the one opening the Chamber."

Rose wished so very much that she had been wrong. Or that Fred had been wrong. That her aunt and the one operating as the heir were not one in the same.

**But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery — particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. **

Hugo gasped in horror. It really hit him what that meant. Ginny had attacked his mother. Ginny had _nearly killed_ his mother.

He looked at Lily with wide eyes and saw that she had pulled her head away from Teddy's shoulder to stare back at him with just as much horror. It sickened her that her mother had tried to kill Hermione, and an edge of guilt cropped up even in her. She could understand, a little, why Scorpius had been trying to apologize for the things his father had done. She felt like she owed Hugo and Rose an apology, to plead that her mother had not been in her own mind.

Hugo felt just the opposite, horrified that his aunt had had to live with the knowledge that she had nearly killed the girl who would become her best friend. How had Ginny ever been able to look Hermione in the eye after that? He was sure his mother had never for one second held it against her, but Ginny must have been sick with guilt over the whole thing. And that gave him his first glimpse at the aftermath this nightmare must have left. Another blow to this discovery.

**And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue. . . .**

"**So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. **

James doubled up at this idea. Rose stifled a small sob. Lily huddled in Teddy's grip. Fred squeezed Hugo's shoulders hard. Albus shook worse than ever. Not only was that 'skeleton' supposed to be his mother, but _she _had been the one to write it. He remembered the words that had inspired the first sparks of fear in this disaster and could not connect their menacing statements with his mother's warm, loopy writing.

**She struggled and cried and became **_**very **_**boring. But there isn't much life left in her. . . . She put too much into the diary, into me. **

Every single person shuddered visibly. James was trying not to imagine his mother struggling and crying. Hugo wriggled a little, squirming at the thought of Ginny and Tom Riddle being part of each other. But it was the statement that there was not much life left in Ginny that really struck most of them.

"Hurry up, Daddy," Lily whispered, staring at the book once more.

**Enough to let me leave its pages at last. . . . I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter."**

"She was bait," Teddy groaned. Half-forgotten snippets of conversation Teddy had not been meant to over-hear, especially from when he was small floated back to him in the night, in particular a conversation between Harry and Ron around his fourth or fifth birthday. Harry had said something like it was dangerous to be close to him. Teddy had had no idea what that meant, and for the next few days feared that if he went to near his godfather, Harry might disappear or keel over or something. He remembered it because it had scared him to hear Harry talking the way he was and had half-thought it had only been a nightmare. But now he understood.

"**Like what?" Harry spat, fists still clenched.**

"**Well," said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, "how is it that **_**you **_**— a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent — **

"Dad has more extraordinary magical talent than you ever will," James snarled, glad to be angry again.

**Managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did **_**you **_**escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"**

"Says quite a bit about Lord Voldemort's 'power' if you ask me," Fred smirked.

**There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.**

"Creepy," Lily shivered. It was like he was becoming the monster, escalating from simply dangerous to mad.

"**Why do you care how I escaped?" said Harry slowly. "Voldemort was after your time. . . ."**

"**Voldemort," said Riddle softly, "is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter. . . ."**

"Finally, he'll know," Teddy sighed. It did not relieve his fears, but it did comfort him a little that Harry finally was aware of what he was dealing with.

**He pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words: **

**tom marvolo riddle**

**Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:**

**i am lord voldemort**

"That's convenient," Fred commented. He was pleased and slightly shocked to notice that it was Rose's mouth that twitched upward. None of the Potters seemed to be able to hear anything but Scorpius's voice at the moment, and Fred couldn't blame them.

"**You see?" he whispered. "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. **

"Intimate friends," Rose scoffed. "Power-hungry and threatened minions, more like."

**You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? **

"Well, that might explain a bit why he hates Muggles so much, even being a half-blood," Scorpius murmured before resuming his reading.

"It's no excuse,' Albus murmured back.

Scorpius shook his head in agreement.

**No, Harry — I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"**

"Hardly," James spat. "And he's down in the history books under his father's name anyway. That's what he'll be remembered by in hundreds of years."

**Harry's brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry's own parents, and so many others. . . . At last he forced himself to speak.**

"**You're not," he said, his quiet voice full of hatred.**

"Dad's scariest when he's quiet," James muttered. Be it disappointment or sorrow or anger, his father seemed to lower in volume to make his words more powerful. It was an art that James had not managed to learn yet.

"**Not what?" snapped Riddle.**

"**Not the greatest sorcerer in the world," said Harry, breathing fast. "Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn't dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you're hiding these days —"**

"Tell him, Uncle Harry," Fred encouraged. "If you can't hex that stupid smile off his face, the truth ought to do it."

He wanted to come to the fight. He didn't want to find out any more disturbing things. He just wanted to see it over.

**The smile had gone from Riddle's face, **

Fred smirked in a satisfied way.

**to be replaced by a very ugly look. **

"**Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere **_**memory **_**of me!" he hissed.**

"**He's not as gone as you might think!" Harry retorted. He was speaking at random, wanting to scare Riddle, wishing rather than believing it to be true — **

"Sometimes that's all you can do," Teddy said absently. If you can't fight, and you can't hide, talk. That was what Harry told the trainees. Distract them, buy time, don't give them the upper hand with silence. If Teddy had had any doubt about this advice, it was well gone now. It had worked for Harry at the end of the last book and even with Aragog in the forest and now again.

**Riddle opened his mouth, but froze.**

**Music was coming from somewhere. **

The group seemed to stir themselves enough to exchange bewildered looks. Music?

**Riddle whirled around to stare down the empty Chamber. The music was growing louder. **

"The Weird Sisters to the rescue!" Fred exclaimed suddenly. "Rock will save the world!"

The shout was so unexpected in their tense silence that it managed to shake all of them. James snorted, and encouraged, Fred started to laugh. Soon the pair of them were cracking up, watched with both amusement and exasperation (however faint, in some cases) by the rest. It mattered little that their laughter was more hysterical than it should have been, and far more enthusiastic than the comment warranted. It was a much-needed break of the tension.

Scorpius was almost loth to keep reading once quiet had fallen again.

**It was eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry's scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its normal size. Then, as the music reached such a pitch that Harry felt it vibrating inside his own ribs, flames erupted at the top of the nearest pillar.**

**A crimson bird the size of a swan had appeared, piping its weird music to the vaulted ceiling. It had a glittering golden tail as long as a peacock's and gleaming golden talons, which were gripping a ragged bundle.**

"Fawkes," Rose murmured, a little awed.

"What's he doing down there?" Hugo asked.

"Helping Dad!" Lily cried, relieved. Her father's chances had seemed rather grim before. She had feared that he had simply gotten stuck in the trap along with her mother. Lily hadn't been able to see how they were going to get out of it.

**A second later, the bird was flying straight at Harry. It dropped the ragged thing it was carrying at his feet, then landed heavily on his shoulder. As it folded its great wings, Harry looked up and saw it had a long, sharp golden beak and a beady black eye.**

**The bird stopped singing. It sat still and warm next to Harry's cheek, gazing steadily at Riddle.**

"**That's a phoenix. . . ." said Riddle, staring shrewdly back at it.**

"_**Fawkes**_**?" Harry breathed, and he felt the bird's golden claws squeeze his shoulder gently.**

It was –almost literally – as if a flame had been lit in the dark events unfolding before them. For the first time since before they'd entered the Chamber, real hope (not merely the comforting knowledge that in the long run, things worked out) flared in all of them.

"Dumbledore's got Dad's back again," Albus said softly. He knew he had not merely been named after the greatest wizard in a century, but after someone his father had cared about a lot, but the second reason had often left him wondering…. Dumbledore was almost as legendary to him as Merlin. It was strange to imagine his farther not only knowing him, but being close to him. This was how it happened. Over the last two books, Albus realized, they were seeing how he'd really gotten his first name.

"**And **_**that **_**—" said Riddle, now eyeing the ragged thing that Fawkes had dropped, "that's the old school Sorting Hat —"**

There were more bewildered looks.

"The Sorting Hat?" Fred said in confusion. "What? Are they going to try to re-sort Tom Riddle into oblivion or something?"

Scorpius continued reading, for the first time all chapter with a real curiosity devoid of trepidation.

**So it was. Patched, frayed, and dirty, the hat lay motionless at Harry's feet.**

**Riddle began to laugh again. He laughed so hard that the dark Chamber rang with it, as though ten Riddles were laughing at once —**

Albus shivered, feeling as if the laughter was ringing in his own head.

"**This is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old hat! Do you feel brave, Harry Potter? Do you feel safe now?"**

"Admittedly, it doesn't seem like much to go on," Rose said regretfully. "But it came from Dumbledore, which means something, I'm sure."

"Harry's done more with less," Teddy shrugged.

"He usually has a wand," Rose said nervously.

Teddy coneeded that this was true with a further plumit of his gut.

**Harry didn't answer. He might not see what use Fawkes or the Sorting Hat were, but he was no longer alone, and he waited for Riddle to stop laughing with his courage mounting.**

"**To business, Harry," said Riddle, still smiling broadly. "Twice — in **_**your **_**past, in **_**my **_**future — we have met. And twice I failed to kill you. **_**How did you survive**_**? Tell me everything. The longer you talk," he added softly, "the longer you stay alive."**

Teddy shivered suddenly. It was not the same words nor the same context that Harry had used, but it was alarmingly similar to the strategy Harry instructed Aurors to use now. He doubted Harry was aware of how nearly he was echoing Tom Riddle, but it was eerie nonetheless.

**Harry was thinking fast, weighing his chances. Riddle had the wand. He, Harry, had Fawkes and the Sorting Hat, neither of which would be much good in a duel. It looked bad, all right . . . **

"No kidding," Hugo muttered.

**but the longer Riddle stood there, the more life was dwindling out of**

**Ginny . . . **

"And that makes it worse," Rose said, squeezing Al's shoulder with her fingers.

**and in the meantime, Harry noticed suddenly, Riddle's outline was becoming clearer, more solid. . . . **

"Does that make it the worst?" Fred asked, anxiety beginning to stir in him again, although he pushed it away.

**If it had to be a fight between him and Riddle,**

"It will be," James said with certainty. There was no other way out at this point, unless Dumbledore himself sang his way into the Chamber of Secrets. And as much as James wanted to see that, for more than one reason, he didn't think it was very likely.

**better sooner than later.**

"**No one knows why you lost your powers when you attacked me," said Harry abruptly. "I don't know myself. But I know why you couldn't **_**kill **_**me. Because my mother died to save me. My common **_**Muggle-born **_**mother," he added, shaking with suppressed rage.**

"Grandma Lily was the best," Lily whispered sadly. "It was almost really her that defeated him the first time, wasn't it?"

"Depends how you look at it, but it nearly was," Teddy agreed.

"**She stopped you killing me. And I've seen the real you, I saw you last year. You're a wreck. You're barely alive. That's where all your power got you. You're in hiding. You're ugly, you're foul —"**

"Hear hear!" Fred said emphatically. It amused him that his uncle had once fought back by calling Voldemort ugly, but it was certainly more than anyone else had dared to do and an effective argument.

**Riddle's face contorted. Then he forced it into an awful smile.**

"**So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that's a powerful countercharm. I can see now . . . there is nothing special about you, after all. I wondered, you see. **

"And that was his first mistake," Teddy said quietly. "Underestimating his adversary. Harry's mother didn't die to save him last time they met. Doesn't he wonder about that?"

**There are strange likenesses between us, after all. Even you must have noticed. **

James spluttered. "He's _nothing _like Dad!"

"Not where it's important," Teddy murmured. He, too, had noticed the similarities, although he had not liked to think much about them or how very lucky they and the rest of the world had been that Harry turned out the way he had.

**Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the only two Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. We even **_**look **_**something alike . . . **

"That's kind of scary," Fred said, blinking.

"Shut up," James snapped. He couldn't argue with that list and it bothered him. "It doesn't _mean _anything."

**but after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That's all I wanted to know."**

"It wasn't lucky chance!' James exploded, getting worked up. "Gran _stopped _you! She _sacrificed _herself! It _wasn't _an accident!"

**Harry stood, tense, waiting for Riddle to raise his wand. But Riddle's twisted smile was widening again.**

"**Now, Harry, I'm going to teach you a little lesson. Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him. . . ."**

And just like that the tension was back, although it had less of the dread from before. Here was the moment. The action was going to start. This was how it had all ended.

**He cast an amused eye over Fawkes and the Sorting Hat, then walked away. Harry, fear spreading up his numb legs, watched Riddle stop between the high pillars and look up into the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddle opened his mouth wide and hissed — but Harry understood what he was saying. . . .**

"_**Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.**_**"**

**Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Fawkes swaying on his shoulder.**

**Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.**

**And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.**

"Oh no," Albus gulped.

"The Basilisk!" Rose squeaked.

"It's getting a lot worse," Hugo said faintly.

**Harry backed away until he hit the dark Chamber wall, and as he shut his eyes tight he felt Fawkes' wing sweep his cheek as he took flight. Harry wanted to shout, "Don't leave me!" but what chance did a phoenix have against the king of serpents?**

"I think a better shot than he has right now," Fred couldn't help but point out.

But James was starting to get excited. If his dad fought the Basilisk, that meant that his dad had _won_. Voldemort was one thing, but a _Basilisk_…

**Something huge hit the stone floor of the Chamber. Harry felt it shudder — he knew what was happening, he could sense it, could almost see the giant serpent uncoiling itself from Slytherin's mouth.**

Not everyone shared James's enthusiasm over hearing about Harry fighting a snake. Rose was looking wary, afraid it wouldn't be quite as glamorous as James was clearly imagining. Albus's insides were writhing at the image of the snake, but he did his best not to show his discomfort.

**Then he heard Riddle's hissing voice:**

"_**Kill him.**_**"**

Teddy saw his imaginary rollercoaster car tilting forward and plunging down the drop. A huge, deadly serpent was coming after his defenseless, twelve-year-old godfather. He thought of all the scars Harry had collected over the years and wondered if this was the story behind any of them. Any other time, he would have found this awesome. But for some reason his inexplicable desire to keep the little boy in the book safe made him nervous to hear about it.

**The basilisk was moving toward Harry; he could hear its heavy body slithering heavily across the dusty floor. **

Albus swallowed hard.

**Eyes still tightly shut, Harry began to run blindly sideways, his hands outstretched, feeling his way — Voldemort was laughing — **

**Harry tripped. He fell hard onto the stone and tasted blood — the serpent was barely feet from him, he could hear it coming —**

Everyone was on the edge of their seat, swept up in the story, the familiar unreality that this had actually happened to their father/uncle/godfather sweeping over them.

"Get up, Dad!"Albus half-shouted, seeing everything happening with far too much vividness.

**There was a loud, explosive spitting sound right above him, and then something heavy hit Harry so hard that he was smashed into the wall. Waiting for fangs to sink through his body **

Lily squeaked a little at the thought of how close that was to happening and Albus squeezed his eyes shut. But Fred and James were breathless with excitement. This was like something straight out of a comic, (so much more welcome than what they had heard about Ginny, which was straight out of a horror story) and they found it a nice change of pace.

**he heard more mad hissing, something thrashing wildly off the pillars —**

**He couldn't help it — he opened his eyes **

"Don't," Teddy groaned.

"He's fine, Teddy," Lily said soothingly, looking at Teddy curiously. Usually it was him saying that to her. She didn't much like the fang bit, but it was better than hearing what had happened to her mother.

"I know he's fine, but he shouldn't take chances like that," Teddy said with frustration.

**wide enough to squint at what was going on.**

**The enormous serpent, bright, poisonous green, thick as an oak trunk, had raised itself high in the air and its great blunt head was weaving drunkenly between the pillars. **

Albus tried not to imagine what that looked like. He couldn't wait until the snake was out of the story.

**As Harry trembled, ready to close his eyes if it turned, **

"See? Dad knows what he's doing," Lily told Teddy.

He smiled weakly at her. "Most of the time…"

**he saw what had distracted the snake.**

**Fawkes was soaring around its head, and the basilisk was snapping furiously at him with fangs long and thin as sabers —**

**Fawkes dived. His long golden beak sank out of sight and a sudden shower of dark blood spattered the floor. **

"Fawkes!" Lily squealed, tears springing to her eyes again.

"Phoenixes can't die, though," James tried to assure her.

"I think they can if they're eaten," Fred pointed out.

"Not helping," James muttered as Lily bit her trembling lip.

**The snake's tail thrashed, narrowly missing Harry, and before Harry could shut his eyes, it turned — Harry looked straight into its face **

"I told you!" Teddy moaned.

"But he didn't get killed," Fred pointed out.

"Well that's a relief,' James said, rolling his eyes.

"He got lucky, then," said Teddy, wondering how Harry could have looked into the Basilisk's face and survived.

"Harry is the best at surviving deadly things," Hugo noted, as if reading Teddy's mind.

**and saw that its eyes, both its great, bulbous yellow eyes, had been punctured by the phoenix; **

"Yes!" Fred and James shouted.

"Go Fawkes!"

"He's alive!" Lily said happily.

"And now Harry can keep his eyes open," said Rose.

"Phoenix: one, Basilisk: zero," Hugo smirked.

**blood was streaming to the floor, and the snake was spitting in agony.**

"_**NO!" **_**Harry heard Riddle screaming. "**_**LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU! YOU CAN STILL SMELL HIM! KILL HIM!"**_

"Er…forgot about that," Hugo said nervously.

**The blinded serpent swayed, confused, still deadly. Fawkes was circling its head, piping his eerie song, jabbing here and there at its scaly nose as the blood poured from its ruined eyes.**

"**Help me, help me," Harry muttered wildly, "someone — anyone —"**

"What's he doing?" Fred asked.

"Asking for help," James answered. "But I dunno who he thinks will hear him. It's a bit late for that."

"Dumbledore said 'help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it'," Teddy reminded them. "So I guess he's asking. And he needs it. No wand, no weapon, the best he can hope for at this point is to run the blind snake into a wall and knock him out. And then there's still Riddle and Ginny."

**The snake's tail whipped across the floor again. Harry ducked. Something soft hit his face.**

**The basilisk had swept the Sorting Hat into Harry's arms. Harry seized it. It was all he had left, his only chance — he rammed it onto his head and threw himself flat onto the floor as the basilisk's tail swung over him again.**

"There better be something good up that hat," Rose muttered. That was when she remembered a different story, one far more infamous (although just as epic) as this one involving a snake, a defenseless boy, and the Sorting Hat. She could only hope that Neville had not been the first to find a sword in the hat.

_**Help me **_**— **_**help me **_**— Harry thought, his eyes screwed tight under the hat. **_**Please help me **_**—**

**There was no answering voice. Instead, the hat contracted, as though an invisible hand was squeezing it very tightly.**

**Something very hard and heavy thudded onto the top of Harry's head, almost knocking him out. **

Rose winced, imagining how that must have hurt, but she was grinning broadly. Everyone else seemed to be coming to a similar conclusion, looks of awe and eagerness breaking out around the group.

**Stars winking in front of his eyes, he grabbed the top of the hat to pull it off and felt something long and hard beneath it.**

**A gleaming silver sword had appeared inside the hat, its handle glittering with rubies the size of eggs.**

"The sword of Gryffindor!" Fred, James, and even Hugo nearly screamed in excitement.

"Just like Neville!" Lily cried.

"That is so WICKED!" said Fred emphatically.

And now they could see what was surely going to happen. Harry would slay the basilisk, just like the knights in all the fairytale books, Lily thought proudly.

"How come we never heard this part of the story at least?" James complained. "Dad always keeps the cool stuff from us!"

"_**KILL THE BOY! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU! SNIFF — SMELL HIM!"**_

**Harry was on his feet, ready. The basilisk's head was falling, its body coiling around, hitting pillars as it twisted to face him. He could see the vast, bloody eye sockets, see the mouth stretching wide, wide enough to swallow him whole, lined with fangs long as his sword, thin, glittering, venomous —**

Scorpius was reading quickly, every eye on him, everyone holding their breath in anticipation of the triumphant moment they knew was coming now.

**It lunged blindly — Harry dodged and it hit the Chamber wall. It lunged again, and its forked tongue lashed Harry's side. He raised the sword in both his hands —**

**The basilisk lunged again, and this time its aim was true — **

Lily couldn't help but gasp, caught up in the story.

**Harry threw his whole weight behind the sword and drove it to the hilt into the roof of the serpent's mouth —**

"YES!" nearly everyone in the clearing cheered. Fred added a whistle in for good measure.

"Dad killed a giant snake with a sword!" James exclaimed jubilantly. "That is the COOLEST thing he's ever done!"

"Even cooler than, you know, saving the world?" Scorpius asked.

"Way cooler," James smirked.

"Cooler than crashing a flying car into the whomping willow?" Fred demanded.

James had to think for a second for that one. "Yeah, even cooler than that, but only by a little bit since it's Dad and he does epic stuff like this a lot more than he does crazy stuff like crashing cars."

Fred was satisfied with that answer.

Albus was practically giddy at the snake's miss fortune.

They all sat back, glad that it was over. Or nearly over. Riddle was still alive, but surely Harry could get rid of him now. After a basilisk…. It must all be uphill from here.

**But as warm blood drenched Harry's arms, he felt a searing pain just above his elbow. **

A twinge of foreboding penetrated their relief.

**One long, poisonous fang was sinking deeper and deeper into his arm and it splintered as the basilisk keeled over sideways and fell, twitching, to the floor.**

James swore. Lily's eyes were wide again. Rose had covered her mouth with her hands. Teddy bit his lip worriedly.

"That's not good," Hugo mumbled.

"No, it isn't," Fred agreed.

This wasn't supposed to happen! Harry had won! The brave hero wasn't supposed to get stabbed after he had already slain the beast! It ruined the triumphant image.

But this wasn't a fairytale. It wasn't a comic strip or one of those Muggle films. And Harry, no matter the amount of courageous, heroic, even recklessly stupid things he had done, was, after all, still human. He may be a hero in his own right, but that did not, as it did in stories, make him invincible.

**Harry slid down the wall. He gripped the fang that was spreading poison through his body and wrenched it out of his arm. But he knew it was too late. White-hot pain was spreading slowly and steadily from the wound. **

"How the hell did he survive that?" Fred asked.

"Barely, is my guess," Teddy muttered. He remembered Fawkes was still there, but Basilisk venom was extremely potent. There was no antidote. He didn't know if even Fawkes could help. But he must have been able to… and quickly. Basilisk venom could cause severe damage in seconds that was irreversible. Once again, he was left marveling at the amount of luck his godfather had needed, even to survive his second year.

**Even as he dropped the fang and watched his own blood soaking his robes, his vision went foggy. The Chamber was dissolving in a whirl of dull color.**

"This is very bad," Rose muttered, also aware of how quickly the venom could spread.

"No kidding," Albus mumbled.

**A patch of scarlet swam past, and Harry heard a soft clatter of claws beside him.**

"**Fawkes," said Harry thickly. "You were fantastic, Fawkes. . . ."**

"He really was," Lily whispered. "If it weren't for him, Dad'd be dead."

"More than once, I think," Teddy murmured.

**He felt the bird lay its beautiful head on the spot where the serpent's fang had pierced him.**

**He could hear echoing footsteps and then a dark shadow moved in front of him.**

"**You're dead, Harry Potter," said Riddle's voice above him. "Dead. Even Dumbledore's bird knows it. Do you see what he's doing, Potter? He's crying."**

"He's healing him," Rose said softly, and Teddy nodded.

"Oh, Dumbledore said something about phoenix tears, didn't he?" Fred remembered.

**Harry blinked. Fawkes's head slid in and out of focus. Thick, pearly tears were trickling down the glossy feathers.**

"**I'm going to sit here and watch you die, Harry Potter. Take your time. I'm in no hurry."**

"He's sick," Lily hissed, seething.

"He's worse than that," Hugo mumbled.

"But the joke's on him," James said triumphantly. "He won't ever get to see Dad die. No matter what he does, Dad _won't _die!"

**Harry felt drowsy. Everything around him seemed to be spinning.**

"**So ends the famous Harry Potter," said Riddle's distant voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry. . . . She bought you twelve years of borrowed time . . . but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must. . . ."**

"Think again," James said under his breath.

_**If this is dying**_**, thought Harry, **_**it's not so bad.**_

Albus shivered a little bit at hearing his father thinking like that.

**Even the pain was leaving him. . . .**

**But was this dying? Instead of going black, the Chamber seemed to be coming back into focus. Harry gave his head a little shake and there was Fawkes, still resting his head on Harry's arm. A pearly patch of tears was shining all around the wound — except that there **_**was **_**no wound —**

Nearly all of them looked relieved. Of course they had already known what was going on thanks to Rose, but it was hard to believe that _tears_ could really heal a poisoned gash.

"**Get away, bird," said Riddle's voice suddenly. "Get away from him — I said, **_**get away **_**—"**

"Too late," Teddy murmured with a small smile.

**Harry raised his head. Riddle was pointing Harry's wand at Fawkes; there was a bang like a gun, and Fawkes took flight again in a whirl of gold and scarlet.**

"**Phoenix tears . . ." said Riddle quietly, staring at Harry's arm. "Of course . . . healing powers . . . I forgot . . ."**

"Maybe _that's _why Dad always beats you," Lily said acidly to the book. "_You_ make mistakes. Ever thought of that?"

**He looked into Harry's face. "But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter . . . you and me. . . ."**

**He raised the wand —**

"Come on, Fawkes," Teddy murmured. "Harry needs you just one more time."

He wasn't exactly sure what the phoenix could do against Riddle, but Harry was wandless and recovering from being stabbed with a basilisk fang. There didn't seem to be a way out of this without some kind of aid.

**Then, in a rush of wings, Fawkes had soared back overhead and something fell into Harry's lap — **_**the diary.**_

"Kill it!" James yelled suddenly. "Destroy that bloody thing! It's where he's coming from!"

"But what about Mum?" Lily asked worriedly. "He said she put her soul into it! What if killing the diary destroys them both?"

"It might be a risk he's got to take," Rose said, wracking her brains to understand what sort of magic was going on and if there was a way to tell what would happen if Harry really did destroy the book. But, as brilliant as she was, Rose had only one year of magical education, and this was far beyond her.

**For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book.**

No one made a sound, eyes wide after Lily voiced her fear. _This _surely must be the end of it.

**There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry's hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then —**

**He had gone. **

The shouting and cheering and screaming that erupted in full force from two chapters of pent up fear and horror was so loud that the few adults still lazing around the table in the garden heard it, but they, of course, assumed it had to do with the boisterous Quidditch match.

"Bout time," Bill said, chuckling. "They've been far too quiet for a Quidditch match that size. I've been getting worried."

Roxanne paused midway through hurling an apple at Louis and all four of them looked curiously in the direction the others had vanished.

"_What_ are they doing?" Dominique asked, burning with curiosity. Having spent much of her childhood tagging along after Teddy and her sister, she was used to being on the outside, the guard. She didn't really mind, but it didn't stop her from wondering what on earth she was covering for.

"HE'S DEAD!" James and Fred roared, leaping to their feet to continue their celebrating.

It was over. All the horrible things that had happened to Ginny, to the whole school, were finished. It was like a ton of lead had been lifted form their shoulders. The moment that they had been reading for for chapters now, the moment when they found out how it all ended up okay, had finally come.

"That was amazing!" Rose exclaimed. "Harry won even without a wand! I mean, he had Fawkes on his side, but still!"

Teddy was grinning hugely. "Yeah. I'd never have believed it if I hadn't just read it. Who else could have defeated Voldemort without a wand? Twice?"

"Dad's the best ever!" Lily squealed.

Albus laughed, looking far happier than he had in quite a few chapters. "Yeah, he is, isn't he, Lil?"

It took quite a while for them all to calm down enough for Scorpius to continue reading. He almost didn't want to, even now that the danger seemed over. It seemed like this chapter just liked to throw curveballs at them. Ginny was (hopefully) going to wake up soon, and he was worried about what that might bring, what sort of condition she'd be in, what she might reveal about the time she was alone in the Chamber.

But the others were all looking at him expectantly, so he read on.

**Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady **_**drip drip **_**of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it.**

**Shaking all over, **

"Can't blame him," Albus mumbled, wondering what sort of state he'd be in if he'd been in his father's shoes. He'd probably be dead, actually.

**Harry pulled himself up. His head was spinning as though he'd just traveled miles by Floo powder. Slowly, he gathered together his wand and the Sorting Hat, and, with a huge tug, retrieved the glittering sword from the roof of the basilisk's mouth.**

"Careful. The teeth," Rose couldn't help but say worriedly.

"I think Harry learned that lesson the last time he was close to that thing's mouth," Hugo told his sister, amused by the way she sounded just like their grandmother.

Rose shuddered a little. "Exactly. He doesn't need another fang in him."

James rolled his eyes. "He's fine. Besides, how else is he supposed to get the sword?"

Scorpius kept reading before the pair of them could get into a real argument, which both were clearly itching for, the last few chapters having been too heavy for them to get into it.

**Then came a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. **

"Mum," Lily said.

There were a few worried looks, wondering if Ginny really was okay yet.

**As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. Her bemused eyes traveled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, over Harry, in his blood-soaked robes, then to the diary in his hand. **

"Just what you want to wake up from a nightmare to," Fred said.

"It must have looked pretty impressive," Rose said thoughtfully. "You know, sword-yielding twelve-year-old, giant dead snake, the book that had made her life hell destroyed in his hand. You know it's not really fair. No guy she ever dated later could have lived up to something like that."

**She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face.**

That caught James off guard. Of all the things he'd heard his mother had done – been forced to do – it was crying that he could simply not imagine. He had seen her cry, but only ever at memorials, which did not count. It scared him a little, reminded him how horrible this whole thing had been for her. It was like – like Riddle had broken her in some way. She had healed, but he had changed her, surely. He had taken something from her that she could never get back, and it wasn't fair.

James hated it, hated feeling all that anger and _sorrow_, which had temporarily been blown away by his father's heroics, coming back again. Riddle might be gone, _Voldemort _might be gone, but he had taken a hell of a lot with him. And James had a terrible feeling that this was only the beginning of the list.

"**Harry — oh, Harry — I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-**_**couldn't **_**say it in front of Percy — it was **_**me, **_**Harry — but I — I s-swear I d-didn't mean to — R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over — and — **_**how **_**did you kill that — that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary —"**

"Thank god," Albus muttered. She didn't remember. She didn't remember hours of waiting alone with _him_. It had already begun to torment him, what might have happened to his mother in the hours between when she'd been taken and when Harry had managed to get to her.

Teddy looked down at his knees. He should have noticed… should have known there was something very wrong…. Ginny crying bothered him. It showed how bad it had been, and for some reason that made him feel small and helpless again. As if he were a little boy who didn't really understand why his godmother was crying.

"**It's all right," said Harry, holding up the diary, and showing Ginny the fang hole, "Riddle's finished. Look! Him **_**and **_**the basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here —"**

"**I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. **

"No!" Lily gasped. "They wouldn't expel her! I mean, I know she finished school, but they wouldn't even _think _about expelling her, would they? It wasn't her fault! She didn't know what that thing was!"

"I can't imagine they'd believe she'd done because she wanted to, but the diary's destroyed," Rose said, biting her lip. "There's no way to _prove_ she hadn't done it of her own free will."

"Dumbledore will believe her," James said confidently. "I mean, it seems like all you've got to do is look at her and you can tell she's been through hell."

"**I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and — **

"She was like, what? One when Bill went to Hogwarts?" Fred said incredulously.

"I've wanted to go ever since Teddy, and I was only one when he left," Lily sniffed. "I can remember the day he left."

"No you can't, Lily," Albus said, rolling his eyes. "I don't even remember the first day Teddy left. For as long as I can remember, he's been gone most of the year."

"Thanks for making me feel loved, Al," Teddy said, smiling slightly.

"I do so remember, Albus Severus Potter," Lily said stubbornly. "He was wearing a blue shirt, weren't you, Teddy? I remember because I thought for some reason that there should be goldfish swimming on it."

"Honestly Lil, the only thing _I _remember was being too nervous and excited to notice anything at all."

"Whatever," Lily said, brushing the matter aside (she knew she was right anyway). "But poor Mum! She'd waited so long to go and then she thought she'd be expelled for something she didn't even know she was doing!"

Lily couldn't imagine it. She had wanted to go to Hogwarts all her life, and after a first year like that one, to think that she would never come back…

_**w-what'll**__**Mum and Dad say**_**?"**

**Fawkes was waiting for them, hovering in the Chamber entrance. Harry urged Ginny forward; they stepped over the motionless coils of the dead basilisk, through the echoing gloom, and back into the tunnel. Harry heard the stone doors close behind them with a soft hiss.**

With every step they took away from the Chamber, it seemed to get easier for Teddy to breath.

So that was how Ginny had made it out alive. He couldn't believe it. Even after reading every detail, he could hardly believe that both Harry and Ginny had survived something like that. When they were eleven and twelve. It seemed incredible that this had happened and yet he had known next to nothing about it. He couldn't blame either one of them for not wanting to talk about it, least of all to their kids, but it just seemed like such a big chunk of their lives, of _them _that he didn't know, as if by getting to know them, they were becoming strangers.

**After a few minutes' progress up the dark tunnel, a distant sound of slowly shifting rock reached Harry's ears.**

"Dad!" Rose said suddenly.

"**Ron!" Harry yelled, speeding up. "Ginny's okay! I've got her!"**

"That must have been one of the _best _moments of his life," said Rose.

"Like a bloody miracle," Fred agreed.

**He heard Ron give a strangled cheer, and they turned the next bend to see his eager face staring through the sizable gap he had managed to make in the rockfall.**

"_**Ginny**_**!" Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened? How — what — where did that bird come from?"**

"He must have been utterly flabbergasted," Fred said, grinning a little.

"He probably thought they were both dead," Teddy said quietly.

"But he kept moving the rock," Rose whispered.

**Fawkes had swooped through the gap after Ginny.**

"**He's Dumbledore's," said Harry, squeezing through himself.**

"**How come you've got a **_**sword **_**?" said Ron, gaping at the glittering weapon in Harry's hand.**

"I'd have loved to see his reaction," James grinned.

"**I'll explain when we get out of here," said Harry with a sideways glance at Ginny, who was crying harder than ever.**

"**But —"**

"**Later," Harry said shortly. He didn't think it was a good idea to tell Ron yet who'd been opening the Chamber, not in front of Ginny, anyway. **

"Probably a wise move," Teddy agreed. It was bad enough that Ginny had had to go through it once that day.

"**Where's Lockhart?"**

"Oh, right," Fred said suddenly. "I'd nearly forgotten about him!"

"**Back there," said Ron, still looking puzzled but jerking his head up the tunnel toward the pipe. "He's in a bad way. Come and see."**

"What happened to him?" Lily wondered, looking a little worried. She hadn't cared much that he got the blast from the wand, but she didn't want even him to be badly hurt.

**Led by Fawkes, whose wide scarlet wings emitted a soft golden glow in the darkness, they walked all the way back to the mouth of the pipe. Gilderoy Lockhart was sitting there, humming placidly to himself.**

"Doesn't seem so bad to me," James said, raising an eyebrow.

"**His memory's gone," said Ron. "The Memory Charm backfired. Hit him instead of us. Hasn't got a clue who he is, **

"Oh, this is perfect!" Fred burst out, and collapsed backwards, howling with laughter.

It didn't take much for the rest to join in. "He's lost his biggest fan! Himself!"

"That really is perfect," Teddy gasped, laughing so hard his stomach was starting to hurt. "Just desserts!"

"I would have been severely disappointed if he'd just been sacked because no one could stand him," James chortled. "I've been waiting for this since we first met him!"

It took a few more minutes for Scorpius to keep reading, and when he did he was grinning ear to ear. He was pretty sure everything was looking up again.

**or where he is, or who we are. I told him to come and wait here. He's a danger to himself."**

**Lockhart peered good-naturedly up at them all.**

"**Hello," he said. "Odd sort of place, this, isn't it? Do you live here?"**

James and Fred smothered their laughter as best they could as Scorpius read on.

"**No," said Ron, raising his eyebrows at Harry.**

**Harry bent down and looked up the long, dark pipe.**

"**Have you thought how we're going to get back up this?" he said to Ron.**

"Er, yeah, that could be a problem," said Hugo.

"They haven't got brooms this time," Rose said gloomily.

"But they've got a phoenix," Teddy reminded Rose.

"Yes, but – will that work?" she asked, eyes going a little wide.

"Will what work?" James demanded impatiently.

"You'll see," Scorpius told him, reading on.

**Ron shook his head, but Fawkes the phoenix had swooped past Harry and was now fluttering in front of him, his beady eyes bright in the dark. He was waving his long golden tail feathers. Harry looked uncertainly at him.**

"**He looks like he wants you to grab hold . . ." said Ron, looking perplexed. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there —"**

"**Fawkes," said Harry, "isn't an ordinary bird." He turned quickly to the others. "We've got to hold on to each other. Ginny, grab Ron's hand. Professor Lockhart —"**

"**He means you," said Ron sharply to Lockhart.**

Fred sniggered some more, but James was too busy looking incredulous. Fawkes _flew _them up the pipe? What was he, super-bird?

"**You hold Ginny's other hand —"**

**Harry tucked the sword and the Sorting Hat into his belt, Ron took hold of the back of Harry's robes, and Harry reached out and took hold of Fawkes's strangely hot tail feathers.**

**An extraordinary lightness seemed to spread through his whole body and the next second, in a rush of wings, they were flying upward through the pipe. **

"That's amazing," Rose breathed as the others looked similarly impressed. "I'd love to study that sort of magical property…"

Scorpius read on over her muttering, far too used to her going off on tangents like this.

**Harry could hear Lockhart dangling below him, saying, "Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!"**

Half the group burst out laughing again.

"He's great," Fred said, shaking his head as he shook with laughter.

"He's almost kind of cute, now," Lily said as if she were talking about a particularly silly little puppy.

**The chill air was whipping through Harry's hair, and before he'd stopped enjoying the ride, it was over — all four of them were hitting the wet floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and as Lockhart straightened his hat, the sink that hid the pipe was sliding back into place.**

**Myrtle goggled at them.**

"**You're alive," she said blankly to Harry.**

"Yeah, we're all a little shocked," Teddy said under his breath.

"**There's no need to sound so disappointed," he said grimly, wiping flecks of blood and slime off his glasses.**

"**Oh, well . . . I'd just been thinking . . . if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," said Myrtle, blushing silver.**

The boys all started sniggering.

"At least she's hospitable," James chortled.

"**Urgh!" said Ron as they left the bathroom for the dark, deserted corridor outside. "Harry! I think Myrtle's grown **_**fond **_**of you! You've got competition, Ginny!"**

"That ought to make things interesting on your date," Fred sniggered, elbowing James in the side.

"No way," James protested. "He was kidnapped into the Chamber. It doesn't count."

"You said if he got in, you'd ask her out," Fred reminded him. "He got in, and you know what that means? James and Myrtle sitting in a tree…" Fred sang.

"But he didn't get in!" James objected loudly. "Dad and Ron _got_ him in! It doesn't count!"

"K-I-S-S-I-N-G…"

"Shut it, Fred!"

Scorpius read over them.

**But tears were still flooding silently down Ginny's face.**

That subdued them a bit.

"**Where now?" said Ron, with an anxious look at Ginny. Harry pointed.**

**Fawkes was leading the way, glowing gold along the corridor. They strode after him, and moments later, found themselves outside Professor McGonagall's office.**

**Harry knocked and pushed the door open.**

Scorpius dropped the book, extremely glad that the chapter was over.

There was a sort of reeling silence as everything they'd heard in the last chapter caught up with them with slamming force.

"That," Rose said a little shakily, "was the worst chapter so far."

"No kidding," Albus mumbled.

"Let's keep going," James said quickly. He did not want to think about what he'd heard any more. He wanted to keep hearing how things got back to normal. He needed to finish this story _tonight_. And he did _not _want to go back up to the house before his parents went home. He had a feeling that if he saw his mother just now, he would melt into a pile of sniveling five-year-old around her ankles and never be able to let her go.

**A/N: Hey there! So what did you think? Thank you guys SO much for reviewing! 450? That's awesome! We really do cherish every single one of them, even if we are too lazy to write back to all of you. Not that I'm trying to be picky or anything, we love every single word any of you want to give us, but if you want a response, longer reviews are usually the ones we write back on. But anyway, yeah, sorry about the lack of funny. We like this story to be as real as we can make it, not having had the experience of hearing how our parents stabbed a giant snake with a sword or where possessed by a deranged murderer. I have a feeling that the darker things get, the less funny we, and the characters, will be able to get, but that doesn't mean we're going to get all melodramatic, either. It's a balancing act. **

**Also, thanks to everyone who went and read and reviewed my snapshot about Lily's reaction to seeing the writing on the wall! It really means a lot to me! **


	16. Dobby's Reward

**Disclaimer: Must you rub our faces in it every chapter? **

**A/N: Finally back! And for the last chapter of the book! Whooo! Another one done! **

**We'd like to take this space to really REALLY thank every single person who has ever reviewed! We are stunned and flattered by the feedback we've gotten. Never in our wildest dreams did we think, when we were first starting out and begging and pleading for even a couple reviews, that we would reach close to 500. So here's to you guys who kept us going! Imagine lots of fireworks and crowds cheering your names and us waving huge THANK YOU banners. :D**

Chapter Eighteen

Dobby's Reward

No one quite had anything to say as Scorpius handed the book to Teddy so that he could finish the last chapter. They were glad it was over. Or nearly over.

James had flopped backwards and stretched out, staring blankly at the starry sky stretching out above him. Albus was slowly uncurling from his cold, tense ball, the blue flames dancing in the lenses of his glasses.

Lily suddenly felt very tired, as if all the adrenalin and tension had been drained out of her, leaving her rather limp. She pulled her corner of the blanket around her more tightly and rested her head on her folded arms, and allowed her eyes to drift close as she listened to Teddy clear his throat and begin to read.

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Dobby's Reward**

"Dobby's coming back?" Lily mumbled tiredly. She remembered what he had done earlier in the book, namely getting her father locked up, nearly expelled, and almost bludgeoned to pieces, and wasn't quite sure what she thought about him. But there was something about the creature she couldn't help but like… however misguided he had been, ha had tried to help her father.

"What d'you reckon his reward is?" Fred inquired, looking, like most of the rest, curious about Dobby's sudden reappearance. He had nearly forgotten about the little elf.

"I hope something good," James said darkly.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Hugo asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Well, we've all seen his grave, haven't we?" James said pointedly.

"He's not going to die. Yet," Teddy amended. "Bill and Fleur haven't even met each other yet, remember? They didn't buy Shell Cottage until after they were married."

"Oh, right," James said a little sheepishly. "I forget sometimes that not everyone gets married almost right out of school like Mum and Dad."

"So what brings Dobby back?" Rose wondered, remembering all the mystery that had surrounded him from before.

"Well, if you lot would ever let me get on with the chapter, I'm sure we'll find out," Teddy said amusedly.

**For a moment there was silence as Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Lockhart stood in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in Harry's case) blood. Then there was a scream.**

"It must have been a sight," James commented.

"Especially since… well, you know," Fred trailed off, unwilling to bring up the fact that Ginny had been believed dead. "You're dad's got a phoenix and a sword," he said instead.

"_**Ginny**_**!"**

**It was Mrs. Weasley, who had been sitting crying in front of the fire. **

"Oh, poor Gran!" Rose breathed. "And Granddad. To think…"

"And then someone must have noticed Dad and Harry were missing too," Hugo added.

"Probably a night from hell for everyone," James nodded.

**She leapt to her feet, closely followed by Mr. Weasley, and both of them flung themselves on their daughter.**

**Harry, however, was looking past them. Professor Dumbledore was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who was taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. **

James was grinning. "Like I said, they strike an impressive image."

**Fawkes went whooshing past Harry's ear and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder, just as Harry found himself and Ron being swept into Mrs. Weasley's tight embrace.**

"**You saved her! You saved her! **_**How **_**did you do it?"**

"And that's an impressive story," James beamed, the cool factor of everything they had done starting to sink in now that the horror was starting to fade (for the time being anyway).

"**I think we'd all like to know that," said Professor McGonagall weakly.**

"I'm sure," Rose smiled. "I don't think any student has surprised her quite the way Harry and Mum and Dad have."

**Mrs. Weasley let go of Harry, who hesitated for a moment, then walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Riddle's diary.**

"Everyone's probably like 'what the…?'" Fred chortled. "I mean, can you think of a stranger set of things for Harry to be carrying?"

**Then he started telling them everything. **

"Everything? But – but they could get expelled!" James gaped. "I mean it's a pretty impressive story, but not for the headmaster and deputy headmistress! And your _parents_!"

"I don't think they run too much danger of being expelled after everything they've just done," Teddy told him.

"And Dumbledore needs to know everything," Rose added.

"Why?" Lily wanted to know.

"Because he's _Dumbledore_," Rose shrugged. "I'm sure he sees ten layers more than we do in everything that goes one. Plus, Harry's story is really the only evidence that Ginny didn't open the Chamber herself."

**For nearly a quarter of an hour he spoke into the rapt silence: He told them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Hermione had finally realized that he was hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how he and Ron had followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog had told them where the last victim of the basilisk had died; how he had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom. . . .**

"**Very well," Professor McGonagall prompted him as he paused, "so you found out where the entrance was — breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add — **

Fred and James grinned proudly, as if this were the most magnificent accomplishment.

**but how on **_**earth **_**did you all get out of there alive, Potter?"**

"I doubt many people could have," Albus mumbled quietly.

**So Harry, his voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving him the sword. But then he faltered. He had so far avoided mentioning Riddle's diary — or Ginny. She was standing with her head against Mrs. Weasley's shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks. **_**What if they expelled her**_**? Harry thought in panic. Riddle's diary didn't work anymore. . . . How could they prove it had been **_**he **_**who'd made her do it all?**

**Instinctively, Harry looked at Dumbledore, who smiled faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.**

"**What interests **_**me **_**most," said Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."**

"Good ol' Dumbledore," Hugo mumbled, curling up beside Lily and burrowing his head into his arms. "Always knows what to do…"

"No way he'd ever expel Mum for something like this," James agreed lazily, trying to find Sirius, the dogs star, in the deep-blue expanse above him.

**Relief — warm, sweeping, glorious relief — swept over Harry.**

"**W-what's that?" said Mr. Weasley in a stunned voice. **

"Guess he didn't know she was more than a hostage," Rose said quietly. She wondered what it must be like to hear something like that about your daughter on top of spending the last several hours believing she was dead. She supposed this was part of why her grandmother worried so much over all of them. If something like this had happened at _Hogwarts_ under _Dumbledore_...

"_**You-Know-Who**_**? En-enchant **_**Ginny**_**? But Ginny's not . . . Ginny hasn't**__**been . . . has she?"**

"Yup," Albus said a little miserably.

"**It was this diary," said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. . . ."**

**Dumbledore took the diary from Harry and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.**

"**Brilliant," he said softly. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He turned around to the Weasleys, who were looking utterly bewildered.**

"**Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. **

"Not anymore," Scorpius mumbled. Although the purebloods he had grown up around hardly let on that they knew his real name, nearly every student he'd met at Hogwarts knew perfectly well. They always started out explaining the story to the Muggle-borns with 'See, a long time ago there was this bloke called Tom Riddle…'

**I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school . . . traveled far and wide . . . sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."**

Lily thought about the monster that had shared Quirrell's body in the previous book. She didn't think it was so difficult to connect him with the dangerously twisted boy that had come out of the diary. The only difference between them really, was that the monster looked the part.

"**But, Ginny," said Mrs. Weasley. "What's our Ginny got to do with — with — **_**him**_**?"**

"Quite a bit, unfortunately," Teddy sadly murmured under his breath.

"**His d-diary!" Ginny sobbed. "I've b-been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year —"**

"_**Ginny**_**!" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you **_**anything**_**? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself **_**if you can't see where it keeps its brain. **_

Teddy smiled slightly, a bit surprised this bit of well-worn advice had come from Arthur. But it made sense. Who knew better about things like that than him? It was his job after all. And Arthur was full of sage advice if only you were to ask.

"So that's where that came from," Hugo said. He and his sister and their cousins had grown up hearing that phrase. It was just one of the mantras that had fallen alongside the ordinary things like 'look both ways before crossing the street' and 'don't touch mummy and daddy's wands' and 'never eat Chocolate Caldrons unless you're _absolutely _sure your best mate's stalker hasn't spiked them with love potion'. Although on reflection, Hugo supposed the last one wasn't so ordinary.

**Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was **_**clearly **_**full of Dark Magic —"**

"She really should have," Rose sighed, disappointed that her aunt hadn't caught the not-right air around the diary.

"She was only eleven," Teddy reminded her. "And she hadn't lived through a war yet. And I doubt Riddle would have made it exactly obvious or easy to hand over the diary. He – well, you saw what he was like."

Rose nodded, conceding the point. But still…

"**I d-didn't know," sobbed Ginny. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it —"**

Rose sighed again. She supposed, if she didn't know about this, if her parents hadn't raised her to be wary, she might have easily been taken in too.

"**Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away," Dumbledore interrupted in a firm voice. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." **

"That's true," Teddy murmured. "I've heard stories… I guess he could be quite… persuading."

Rose squirmed a little, feeling bad that a small part of her blamed Ginny. She knew her aunt couldn't really have stopped it, that it wasn't her fault. Maybe it was because the Ginny she knew now was far too wary to be caught up with something like this that she thought she should have known better.

**He strode over to the door and opened it. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, twinkling kindly down at her. "You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out Mandrake juice — I daresay the basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."**

"**So Hermione's okay!" said Ron brightly.**

Hugo looked very happy about this. In fact, there was a degree of relief in everybody's expressions.

"**There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny," said Dumbledore.**

"That means Colin is okay, too, right?" Lily said anxiously.

"Yeah, sounds like it," James said, grinning. He liked that Colin kid.

_He's alright for now,_ Teddy thought sadly.

**Mrs. Weasley led Ginny out, and Mr. Weasley followed, still looking deeply shaken.**

"Us to," Albus said quietly. He wondered if would be able to sleep at all tonight after this.

"**You know, Minerva," Professor Dumbledore said thoughtfully to Professor McGonagall, "I think all this merits a good **_**feast.**_** Might I ask you to go and alert the kitchens?"**

Fred grinned. "Dumbledore was _cool_, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, he was pretty cool," Teddy laughed.

Albus flashed a half-heartedly triumphant look in James's direction and James didn't even try to make a crack at his expense. He just shrugged at his little brother, half-grinning himself.

"**Right," said Professor McGonagall crisply, also moving to the door. "I'll leave you to deal with Potter and Weasley, shall I?"**

"**Certainly," said Dumbledore.**

**She left, and Harry and Ron gazed uncertainly at Dumbledore. What exactly had Professor McGonagall meant, **_**deal **_**with them? Surely — **_**surely **_**— they weren't about to be punished?**

"Nah, Dumbledore's _cool_," James said off-handedly, waving an unconcerned hand.

"Besides, Harry and Ron just saved the whole school," Teddy put in. "The teachers couldn't even do that."

"**I seem to remember telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any more school rules," said Dumbledore. **

**Ron opened his mouth in horror.**

"**Which goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words," Dumbledore went on, smiling. "You will both receive Special Awards for Services to the School and — let me see — yes, I think two hundred points apiece for Gryffindor."**

James jerked upright, gaping at Teddy. "Did you just say _two hundred _points _apiece_?"

Teddy nodded, gaping a little himself.

"But last year they stopped You-know-who himself from coming back and they only got _sixty _at the most!"

"Yeah, but that was kind of set up by Dumbledore, wasn't it," Fred reminded him. "Your dad reckoned he was watching over their shoulders. Not this time though. This was all them."

"Probably saving a life makes it infinitely more valuable," Teddy chipped in. "Not that points really matter very much after that, but still… bet it's some kind of record…"

"They got awards?" Rose said, looking interested. "I'll be they're still in the trophy room! We should go find them when we get back."

"Rose," Albus said, turning to look at her. "Our parents have their names everywhere. Half the history books, down at the ministry, on a veterans' plaque in the entrance hall… They got orders of Merlin. You have their chocolate frog cards on your dresser. What's so interesting about special services to the school?"

"It's more for us to polish in detention," Fred said, wincing at the memory of a particularly grueling night he'd been forced to spend scrubbing old plaques. Now that he thought about it, he remembered seeing his uncles' names on a couple of them, but he'd assumed it was from the final battle or something. In a way, this was better. Hardly anyone knew about this battle.

Rose seemed to be thinking similarly (which was surely a first for the two of them) because she said impatiently to Albus, "Yes, but now we know the story behind _these _plaques. Don't you want to look at them?"

Albus did not really see what the attraction was, but he was sure he'd be dragged off for an afternoon searching through the trophy room anyway.

**Ron went as brightly pink as Lockhart's valentine flowers and closed his mouth again.**

"**But one of us seems to be keeping mightily quiet about his part in this dangerous adventure," Dumbledore added. "Why so modest, Gilderoy?"**

Fred and James exchanged grins at the mention of Lockhart.

**Harry gave a start. He had completely forgotten about Lockhart. He turned and saw that Lockhart was standing in a corner of the room, still wearing his vague smile. When Dumbledore addressed him, Lockhart looked over his shoulder to see who he was talking to.**

There was quite a bit of snickering.

"**Professor Dumbledore," Ron said quickly, "there was an accident down in the Chamber of Secrets. Professor Lockhart —"**

"**Am I a professor?" said Lockhart in mild surprise. "Goodness. I expect I was hopeless, was I?"**

That did it. Everyone howled with laughter.

"He really was," Fred gasped, shaking with laughter.

"**He tried to do a Memory Charm and the wand backfired," Ron explained quietly to Dumbledore.**

"**Dear me," said Dumbledore, shaking his head, his long silver mustache quivering. "Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy!"**

"**Sword?" said Lockhart dimly. "Haven't got a sword. That boy has, though." He pointed at Harry. "He'll lend you one."**

And that set them off again.

"I'm starting to really like him," Fred choked, between hoots.

"**Would you mind taking Professor Lockhart up to the infirmary, too?" Dumbledore said to Ron. "I'd like a few more words with Harry. . . ."**

**Lockhart ambled out. Ron cast a curious look back at Dumbledore and Harry as he closed the door.**

**Dumbledore crossed to one of the chairs by the fire.**

"**Sit down, Harry," he said, and Harry sat, feeling unaccountably nervous.**

"Chatting with the headmaster after explaining how you smashed a thousand school rules to pieces probably has that affect," Rose said reasonably.

"**First of all, Harry, I want to thank you," said Dumbledore, eyes twinkling again. "You must have shown me real loyalty down in the Chamber. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you."**

"Well, he is Dumbledore's man," said Rose, remembering the title from some article she had read long ago, or maybe from something her parents had been discussing when she was only half-listening. Come to think of it, it was probably the second, because she connected a strange tone to the phrase, as if it meant more.

**He stroked the phoenix, which had fluttered down onto his knee. Harry grinned awkwardly as Dumbledore watched him.**

"**And so you met Tom Riddle," said Dumbledore thoughtfully. "I imagine he was **_**most **_**interested in you. . . ."**

"Yeah, you could say that," James muttered, shuddering as he remembered the almost wolf-like way Riddle seemed to have regarded his father, eager for bloodshed t begin.

**Suddenly, something that was nagging at Harry came tumbling out of his mouth.**

"**Professor Dumbledore . . . Riddle said I'm like him. Strange likenesses, he said. . . ."**

"Don't even think about the shite he spewed," James spat, sudden heat in his voice. "Dad's nothing like him. Nothing at all."

But Scorpius could easily see how that line would bother Harry. It was easy for even small likenesses to get into your head. They were an expectation of your character to be something you didn't want to be.

"_**Did **_**he, now?" said Dumbledore, looking thoughtfully at Harry from under his thick silver eyebrows. "And what do you think, Harry?"**

"**I don't think I'm like him!" said Harry, **

"You're not," James said forcefully.

**more loudly than he'd intended. "I mean, I'm — I'm in **_**Gryffindor, **_**I'm . . ."**

**But he fell silent, a lurking doubt resurfacing in his mind.**

"**Professor," he started again after a moment. "The Sorting Hat told me I'd — I'd have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought **_**I**_** was Slytherin's heir for a while . . . because I can speak Parseltongue. . . ."**

James looked uncomfortable and agitated at the reminder of those things.

"**You can speak Parseltongue, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly, "because Lord Voldemort — who **_**is **_**the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin — can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. **

There was a bit of uncomfortable shifting.

"What's that mean, exactly?" Albus asked after a second. "Not – not like with Mum, right? It's not like there's a _piece _of him –"

"No," Teddy said, shaking his head. "I think he just means, like…. Well, people have all sorts of theories about magic and how it passes on. Back during the war the ministry tried to say that muggle-borns _stole _their magic and were criminals. But obviously that's absurd. Most people think it's genetic. But, maybe there is a way to pass on powers. Like when you get hit with a rebounded killing curse that didn't kill either of the people it hit. So a little bit of Voldemort's magic got put in Harry. Not like a piece of him, like with Ginny."

"I still don't like it," said Rose. "He did all kinds of creepy things. Who knows what kind of _powers _he had?"

"But it doesn't change Dad," Albus felt the need to insist. "Like when we found out he was a parselmouth. It doesn't change him."

Teddy nodded at Al before he kept reading.

**Not something he intended to do, I'm sure. . . ."**

"**Voldemort put a bit of himself in **_**me**_**?" Harry said, thunderstruck.**

"**It certainly seems so."**

"It sounds – " James started, grimacing.

"I know," Teddy interrupted. "I just meant, like, not his soul or anything like that."

"Either way, that' s not exactly something I'd like to hear," Scorpius mumbled. It was much worse than just the similarities.

"**So I **_**should **_**be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore's face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin's power in me, and it —"**

"**Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue — resourcefulness — determination — a certain disregard for rules," **

James stared hard at the fire, his insides squirming a bit. Those last two things, at least, were qualities he prized in himself.

**he added, his mustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."**

"Because he asked," Albus whispered.

"**It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . ."**

"_**Exactly,**_**" said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you **_**very different **_**from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." **

"How often have we heard that?" Albus wondered, looking pointedly over at Scorpius. "Doesn't matter where you come from or what you _can _do. It matters what you _actually _do. Period."

"Thanks Dr. Philosophy, think I got it," Scorpius muttered, rolling his eyes at his friend, but smiling slightly all the same.

"It's a good piece of wisdom," Teddy observed. And if more people remembered it, I think the world might be a little better place."

**Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned. "If you want proof, Harry, that you belong in Gryffindor, I suggest you look more closely at **_**this.**_**"**

**Dumbledore reached across to Professor McGonagall's desk, picked up the blood-stained silver sword, and handed it to Harry. Dully, Harry turned it over, the rubies blazing in the firelight. And then he saw the name engraved just below the hilt.**

_**Godric Gryffindor.**_

"Proof!" James couldn't help but say triumphantly.

"Dumbledore just pointed that out," Rose told him.

"Exactly! Dad's a Gryffindor. Really."

"No one was denying it," Teddy pointed out with mild amusement.

"The Sorting Hat was," James huffed, crossing his arms.

"**Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled **_**that **_**out of the hat, Harry," said Dumbledore simply.**

**For a minute, neither of them spoke. Then Dumbledore pulled open one of the drawers in Professor McGonagall's desk and took out a quill and a bottle of ink.**

"**What you need, Harry, is some food and sleep. I suggest you go down to the feast, while I write to Azkaban — we need our gamekeeper back. **

There was some cheering and whistles for Hagrid coming back.

**And I must draft an advertisement for the **_**Daily**__**Prophet, **_**too," he added thoughtfully. "We'll be needing a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. . . . Dear me, we do seem to run through them, don't we?"**

Teddy grinned broadly, thinking of who the next Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would be. He could hardly wait until tomorrow when they started reading about Harry's third year.

**Harry got up and crossed to the door. He had just reached for the handle, however, when the door burst open so violently that it bounced back off the wall.**

**Lucius Malfoy stood there, fury in his face. **

Scorpius felt his stomach fall horribly.

**And cowering behind his legs, heavily wrapped in bandages, was**

Teddy stopped, feeling his own stomach fall at the reaction the next word would get. In fact, it brought up a strong surge of revulsion for the Malfoys in him, too. But the others were looking intently at him, wanting to know why he'd stopped (Scorpius was already looking down, anticipating what was probably coming), so he went on.

_**Dobby.**_

Everyone turned to look at Scorpius, who was carefully not looking at anyone, the ease he had started to slip into in the last few chapters evaporating. He thought of how horribly Dobby had been treated, realized that it hadn't been only his grandfather that had done that, but his father and his grandmother too. And then with a sickening jolt, he remembered how much Dobby had known about what was happening with the Chamber of Secrets…

Rose looked like she was vibrating with pent-up fury, but Albus was shooting her warning looks. Lily stared wide-eyed at Scorpius, and Hugo was trying hard not to.

Teddy quickly read on, hoping to spare Scorpius any comments that would make things worse.

"**Good evening, Lucius," said Dumbledore pleasantly. **

**Mr. Malfoy almost knocked Harry over as he swept into the room. Dobby went scurrying in after him, crouching at the hem of his cloak, a look of abject terror on his face.**

"Why's he so scared?" Lily asked, looking sympathetic.  
Teddy had an idea, but he did not like to voice it, so he kept reading.

**The elf was carrying a stained rag with which he was attempting to finish cleaning Mr. Malfoy's shoes. Apparently Mr. Malfoy had set out in a great hurry, for not only were his shoes half-polished, but his usually sleek hair was disheveled. Ignoring the elf bobbing apologetically around his ankles, he fixed his cold eyes upon Dumbledore.**

"**So!" he said "You've come back. The governors suspended you, but you still saw fit to return to Hogwarts."**

"**Well, you see, Lucius," said Dumbledore, smiling serenely, "the other eleven governors contacted me today. It was something like being caught in a hailstorm of owls, to tell the truth. They'd heard that Arthur Weasley's daughter had been killed and wanted me back here at once. They seemed to think I was the best man for the job after all. Very strange tales they told me, too. . . . Several of them seemed to think that you had threatened to curse their families if they didn't agree to suspend me in the first place."**

"I _knew _he was pulling the strings," James growled furiously, but nobody was really very surprised by this.

**Mr. Malfoy went even paler than usual, but his eyes were still slits of fury.**

"**So — have you stopped the attacks yet?" he sneered. "Have you caught the culprit?"**

"Well, yes, actually," Fred said smugly.

"**We have," said Dumbledore, with a smile.**

"_**Well**_**?" said Mr. Malfoy sharply. "Who is it?"**

"**The same person as last time, Lucius," said Dumbledore. "But this time, Lord Voldemort was acting through somebody else. By means of this diary."**

**He held up the small black book with the large hole through the center, watching Mr. Malfoy closely. Harry, however, was watching Dobby.**

**The elf was doing something very odd. **

"He usually is," Fred nodded, and then, under Rose's narrowed-eyed gaze, "I mean that in the most complimentary way possible."

**His great eyes fixed meaningfully on Harry, he kept pointing at the diary, then at Mr. Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist.**

"But…" Rose's mouth dropped open in horror.

Scorpius wanted to disappear into the ground. So this whole mess was due to his family after all.

"That day, at Flourish and Blots," James said slowly. "When he was talking to Granddad… he took one of Mum's books, didn't he?"

Teddy had gone rather white with fury. It wasn't just some stupid accident; someone had knowingly planted that diary in Ginny's things, _intending _this to happen. Lucius Malfoy had done this to Ginny. And finally there was someone to blame for all the horrors they had read that night, someone beyond the terrible shadow of Lord Voldemort.

He kept reading in a tight sort of voice.

"**I see . . ." said Mr. Malfoy slowly to Dumbledore.**

"**A clever plan," said Dumbledore in a level voice, still staring Mr. Malfoy straight in the eye. **

"He knows," James said suddenly. "He _knows _it was Malfoy!"

"But how is he supposed to pin it on him?" Rose demanded bitterly.

"Dobby knows!" James said excitedly. "He could testify!"

"Do you honestly think that any court under Fudge would listen to a house-elf over one of the old _established _families?" Rose snapped.

"Dad, then," James persisted. "He knows, he was there, he could say he saw it. And Dumbledore will back them up."

"And all Malfoy had to do was slip half the court a nice donation to their bank accounts and use that smooth tongue of his and he'd be out of it," this time it was Teddy who countered James's plan, but his voice was dull as he explained the corruption of the previous administration.

"It's sick," James snarled. "Sick that he could get away with something like this."

Teddy nodded tiredly as he returned to the book.

"**Because if Harry here" — Mr. Malfoy shot Harry a swift, sharp look — "and his friend Ron hadn't discovered this book, why — Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to prove she hadn't acted of her own free will. . . ."**

"He was trying to pin it on Mum!" James howled in outrage, but Teddy read over him.

**Mr. Malfoy said nothing. His face was suddenly masklike.**

"**And imagine," Dumbledore went on, "what might have happened then. . . . The Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and killing Muggle-borns. . . . **

"It was to get at Granddad?" Albus asked hollowly. "It was _all politics_?"

"Just a chess move," Teddy said bitterly, eyes flashing. "That's how it is with the old families though, Gran's told me stories," he laughed mirthlessly. "Just another way to gain power, to control, not a care who gets blown away, they're all so far below it doesn't matter. It's a twisted world."

"And it's where I come from," Scorpius couldn't help but mumble in a low voice. He did not want to be pressed into doing things like that and he was beginning to fear what might be expected of him when he got older.

Albus and Rose exchanged faintly exasperated looks, but it was Teddy who replied fiercely, "No, it's not."

At Scorpius's dubious look he pushed on. "The Malfoys fell out of power with the war. You've still got your manor and enough gold to be comfortable, but your status has slipped, you know that. Your parents and grandparents might like to pretend different, most of the time – it's not an easy thing to accept after generations of being on top – but you don't play with the important people anymore like your grandfather did. You aren't being trained to use people. You are in an entirely different league than your grandfather was. You are as far from that world as the rest of us."

Scorpius swallowed and nodded.

**Very fortunate the diary was discovered, and Riddle's memories wiped from it. Who knows what the consequences might have been otherwise. . . ."**

**Mr. Malfoy forced himself to speak.**

"**Very fortunate," he said stiffly.**

**And still, behind his back, Dobby was pointing, first to the diary, then to Lucius Malfoy, then punching himself in the head.**

**And Harry suddenly understood. **

"Bit slow, aren't we?" James drawled, half smirking.

**He nodded at Dobby, and Dobby backed into a corner, now twisting his ears in punishment.**

"I wish he didn't have to do that," Lily whispered, looking sad. "It's terrible."

"**Don't you want to know how Ginny got hold of that diary, Mr. Malfoy?" said Harry.**

**Lucius Malfoy rounded on him.**

"**How should I know how the stupid little girl got hold of it?" he said.**

"Because you gave it to her, you sick bastard," Fred said under his breath.

"**Because you gave it to her," said Harry. "In Flourish and Blotts. You picked up her old Transfiguration book and slipped the diary inside it, didn't you?"**

**He saw Mr. Malfoy's white hands clench and unclench.**

"**Prove it," he hissed.**

"**Oh, no one will be able to do that," said Dumbledore, smiling at Harry. **

James twisted the grass beside him furiously with his fingers, and several other people looked frustrated and upset about this.

"**Not now that Riddle has vanished from the book. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go giving out any more of Lord Voldemort's old school things. If any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make sure they are traced back to you. . . ."**

**Lucius Malfoy stood for a moment, and Harry distinctly saw his right hand twitch as though he was longing to reach for his wand. Instead, he turned to his house-elf.**

"**We're going, Dobby!"**

**He wrenched open the door and as the elf came hurrying up to him, he kicked him right through it. They could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way along the corridor. **

Rose was spitting with indignation. Lily had covered her mouth with her hands.

"That really is sick, the way they used to be treated," Fred muttered quietly. He, like most of the rest, had paid little attention to Rose's rants or even what his aunt had done in the ministry. But this got his attention.

**Harry stood for a moment, thinking hard. Then it came to him —**

"What came to him?" James asked, looking both curious and a little weary. He wasn't sure if he could take any more of his father's impulse stunts just then.

"**Professor Dumbledore," he said hurriedly. "Can I give that diary **_**back **_**to Mr. Malfoy, please?"**

A few of them exchanged raised eyebrows. What was he doing?

"**Certainly, Harry," said Dumbledore calmly. "But hurry. The feast, remember. . . ."**

**Harry grabbed the diary and dashed out of the office. He could hear Dobby's squeals of pain receding around the corner. **

Lily winced.

**Quickly, wondering if this plan could possibly work, Harry took off one of his shoes, pulled off his slimy, filthy sock, and stuffed the diary into it. **

"Erm… what exactly is he planning with that?" Fred asked, confused. "Disgust Malfoy away?"

Rose, however, was holding her breath, wondering… hoping….

**Then he ran down the dark corridor.**

**He caught up with them at the top of the stairs.**

"**Mr. Malfoy," he gasped, skidding to a halt, "I've got something for you —"**

**And he forced the smelly sock into Lucius Malfoy's hand.**

Fred sniggered a little at the thought of Lucius Malfoy's face.

"**What the — ?"**

**Mr. Malfoy ripped the sock off the diary, threw it aside, then looked furiously from the ruined book to Harry.**

Rose looked a bit disappointed. She had thought Malfoy might shove the sock into Dobby's hand or something, not wanting to touch it. But she supposed it had been a longshot. Even furious, Malfoy still had some sense about him.

Lily and Hugo exchanged a bewildered look, but from the look on Teddy, James, Fred, Albus, and Scorpius's faces, they had an inkling of what Harry had been trying to do, too.

"**You'll meet the same sticky end as your parents one of these days, Harry Potter," he said softly. "They were meddlesome fools, too."**

The Potters looked a bit indignant about that comment.

**He turned to go.**

"**Come, Dobby. I said, **_**come.**_**"**

Rose caught her breath.

"Did it…?" She asked, but Teddy was hurriedly reading on, a grin breaking across his face.

**But Dobby didn't move. He was holding up Harry's disgusting, slimy sock, and looking at it as though it were a priceless treasure.**

"**Master has given a sock," said the elf in wonderment. "Master gave it to Dobby."**

"**What's that?" spat Mr. Malfoy. "What did you say?"**

"**Got a sock," said Dobby in disbelief. "Master threw it, and Dobby caught it, and Dobby — Dobby is **_**free.**_**"**

There was an elated outbreak of cheering. Fred and James leapt up and began preforming some sort of triumphant war dance around the fire. Lily was beaming. Rose and Albus were shouting. And Scorpius was laughing. At that moment he would have liked to congratulate Harry, not only for freeing Dobby from a terrible life of slavery, but also for humiliating his grandfather and forcing him to do his own chores.

"Daddy set him free!" Lily squealed happily. "See James? He didn't have to die to get free! Dad gave him a life of freedom!"

"Should have known it was him that set Dobby free," Teddy grinned, shaking his head. "He works practically as hard as Hermione for creature rights."

"I feel like I should thank him or something," Rose said, looking very impressed by her uncle, not only that his plan (one he came up just after coming out of the Chamber of Secrets) had worked, but also that he had thought of doing it in the first place. But like Teddy said, it wasn't really all that surprising when she thought about what both her parents and Harry had done for legislation.

Still smiling, Teddy returned to the book.

**Lucius Malfoy stood frozen, staring at the elf. Then he lunged at Harry.**

"Oi!" James exclaimed, alarmed by this sudden danger, unexpected danger. He didn't want to ever find out what Lucius Malfoy could do with a wand.

"**You've lost me my servant, boy!"**

**But Dobby shouted, "You shall not harm Harry Potter!"**

**There was a loud bang, and Mr. Malfoy was thrown backward. He crashed down the stairs, three at a time, landing in a crumpled heap on the landing below. **

There were a lot of satisfied smirks, including one on the face of Lucius Malfoy's grandson. Fred and James both shouted "Go Dobby!"

**He got up, his face livid, and pulled out his wand, but Dobby raised a long, threatening finger.**

"**You shall go now," he said fiercely, pointing down at Mr. Malfoy. "You shall not touch Harry Potter. You shall go now."**

**Lucius Malfoy had no choice. With a last, incensed stare at the pair of them, he swung his cloak around him and hurried out of sight.**

"Thank god," Scorpius muttered, hoping this was the last they'd see of his grandfather for a long time.

There were some more appreciative whistles (mostly from Fred and James) for Dobby and some laughter at Mr. Malfoy's disgrace. It did not make them forget all the damage he had caused, but it did offer some small revenge that they could celebrate for the moment.

"**Harry Potter freed Dobby!" said the elf shrilly, gazing up at Harry, **

" 'Course he did," Albus said proudly.

**moonlight from the nearest window reflected in his orb-like eyes. "Harry Potter set Dobby free!"**

"I think he just made himself an incredibly loyal friend," Teddy said softly, remembering the little grave and what little he knew about how it got there.

"**Least I could do, Dobby," said Harry, grinning. "Just promise never to try and save my life again."**

There was some laughter at this, but Teddy thought sadly again of the little grave and that he probably still had a godfather because Dobby had broken that promise.

**The elf 's ugly brown face split suddenly into a wide, toothy smile.**

"**I've just got one question, Dobby," said Harry as Dobby pulled on Harry's sock with shaking hands. "You told me all this had nothing to do with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, remember? Well —"**

"Yeah, what was that about?" James wondered, not waiting the two seconds for Teddy to read the answer.

"**It was a clue, sir," said Dobby, his eyes widening, as though this was obvious. "Was giving you a clue. The Dark Lord, before he changed his name, could be freely named, you see?"**

Rose smacked her forehead. "I should have realized!"

"How the bloddy – how were you supposed to realize _that_?" James demanded indignantly. "He could have meant anything!"

"It was clever," Teddy admitted, smiling. "Too clever for us, though. And for Harry, too."

"**Right," said Harry weakly. "Well, I'd better go. There's a feast, and my friend Hermione should be awake by now. . . ."**

Hugo smiled at the reminder.

**Dobby threw his arms around Harry's middle and hugged him.**

"**Harry Potter is greater by far than Dobby knew!" he sobbed. "Farewell, Harry Potter!"**

**And with a final loud crack, Dobby disappeared.**

"I'm glad he gets to enjoy being free," Lily sighed. "I wish he didn't have to die…"

"You're putting a real damper on things, Lil," James told his sister.

She smiled apologetically.

**Harry had been to several Hogwarts feasts, but never one quite like this. Everybody was in their pajamas, and the celebration lasted all night. Harry didn't know whether the best bit was Hermione running toward him, screaming "You solved it! You solved it!" **

Rose and Hugo beamed at the mention of their mother and Fred and James welcomed her back to the story with loud cheering.

**or Justin hurrying over from the Hufflepuff table to wring his hand and apologize endlessly for suspecting him, or Hagrid turning up at half past three, cuffing Harry and Ron so hard on the shoulders that they were knocked into their plates of trifle, **

There was more cheering mingled with a bit of sniggering.

**or his and Ron's four hundred points for Gryffindor securing the House Cup for the second year running, **

Fred and James seemed to be in a cheering mood now, and they hooted at the mention of Gryffindor's victory, earning a half-disapproving, half-amused look from Rose.

**or Professor McGonagall standing up to tell them all that the exams had been canceled as a school treat**

More cheering. It was nice to have something to cheer over finally. And it distracted James from having to think about… other things.

**("Oh, **_**no**_**!" said Hermione), **

"Only her," Fred laughed fondly.

**or Dumbledore announcing that, unfortunately, Professor Lockhart would be unable to return next year, owing to the fact that he needed to go away and get his memory back. Quite a few of the teachers joined in the cheering that greeted this news.**

"**Shame," said Ron, helping himself to a jam doughnut. "He was starting to grow on me."**

"Me too," Fred and James chorused, grinning at each other.

**The rest of the final term passed in a haze of blazing sunshine. Hogwarts was back to normal with only a few, small differences — Defense Against the Dark Arts classes were canceled ("but we've had plenty of practice at that anyway," Ron told a disgruntled Hermione) **

"Too true," Teddy muttered fervently.

**and Lucius Malfoy had been sacked as a school governor.**

Fred and James got the last of their cheering out of their system with this announcement, and, to their surprise (especially Albus and Rose) Scorpius jumped up and joined them.

**Draco was no longer strutting around the school as though he owned the place. On the contrary, he looked resentful and sulky.**

Fred and James smirked a bit and Lily said snifily, "Serves him right."

**On the other hand, Ginny Weasley was perfectly happy again.**

"Well, I doubt 'perfectly'," Teddy said sadly.

**Too soon, it was time for the journey home on the Hogwarts Express. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny got a compartment to themselves. They made the most of the last few hours in which they were allowed to do magic before the holidays. They played Exploding Snap, set off the very last of Fred and George's Filibuster fireworks, and practiced disarming each other by magic. Harry was getting very good at it.**

"I should hope so," Fred grinned. "He's got to make it his signature move pretty soon, can't have any mistakes there."

**They were almost at King's Cross when Harry remembered something.**

"**Ginny — what did you see Percy doing, that he didn't want you to tell anyone?"**

Fred and James looked eagerly at each other, the sense of oncoming teasing material (even if it was more than twenty years old and impossible for _them_ to use) overwhelming.

"**Oh, that," said Ginny, giggling. "Well — Percy's got a **_**girlfriend.**_**"**

**Fred dropped a stack of books on George's head.**

"_**What**_**?"**

****Teddy grinned. Knew it.

"**It's that Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater," said Ginny. "That's who he was writing to all last summer. He's been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them **_**kissing **_**in an empty classroom one day. **

Fred and James made a show of gagging and spluttering in disgust. Rose rolled her eyes at them. Hugo and Lily giggled.

"Uncle Percy with someone other than Auntie Audrey," Fred said, sitting up again. "It seems weird. It's like they were made for each other – and not in that sappy romantic way, I mean like there's really no one else in the world for them."

"Fred!" Rose admonished. "Don't me mean."

"I don't mean it to be mean!" Fred said hurriedly. "I just mean – well, can you imagine anyone else with Uncle Percy? Or Uncle Percy with anyone else? I didn't think he took his head out of books long enough to notice girls until he graduated."

**He was so upset when she was — you know — attacked. You won't tease him, will you?" she added anxiously.**

"Was it even worth asking that?" Teddy wondered, trying and failing to imagine Fred or James keeping _anything _like that to themselves. James hadn't lasted two minutes when he caught him with Victoire, and that was only because he had to get to the other side of the platform.

"**Wouldn't dream of it," said Fred, who was looking like his birthday had come early.**

"**Definitely not," said George, sniggering.**

**The Hogwarts Express slowed and finally stopped.**

**Harry pulled out his quill and a bit of parchment and turned to Ron and Hermione.**

"**This is called a telephone number," he told Ron, scribbling it twice, tearing the parchment in two, and handing it to them. "I told your dad how to use a telephone last summer — he'll know. Call me at the Dursleys', okay? I can't stand another two months with only Dudley to talk to. . . ."**

"That's a good idea," Hugo said, a bit relieved. "Nothing like Dobby could happen again that way."

Rose looked dubious. "I don't know…. Remember when Dad tried to use Gran's blender?"

They both winced.

"But Granddad knows how. It'll be okay," Hugo insisted confidently.

"**Your aunt and uncle will be proud, though, won't they?" said Hermione as they got off the train and joined the crowd thronging toward the enchanted barrier. "When they hear what you did this year?"**

"She's got no idea," Teddy said a bit sadly. How could she? Her parents probably doted on her every small accomplishment. And didn't seem as if Harry ever tried very hard to explain what life with the Dursleys was like….

"**Proud?" said Harry. "Are you crazy? All those times I could've died, and I didn't manage it? They'll be furious. . . ."**

"Dad…" Lily sighed, looking gloomy again.

"At least he doesn't brood about it," James said bracingly. "He's got Ron and Hermione and all the Weasleys… He's okay."

Lily didn't know how someone could be okay with the certainty that their family hoped they would get themselves killed, but as if to prove James's last comment about Harry having Ron and Hermione, Teddy read the last line.

**And together they walked back through the gateway to the Muggle world.**

"The end," Teddy said, closing the book for the last time. He took a deep breath and let it out, suddenly very tired.

No one said anything for a moment, just drifting in the silence. Then Rose shook herself and pulled herself away from Al and Scorpius and their blanket to collect the book.

"I think we should all go to bed," she said, stuffing the book into her beaded bag. "I was talking to Dom and Roxie at dinner and we've got a plan for tomorrow, but we'll have to get up early" – Fred and James immediately protested to this idea, but Rose ignored them – "I'll tell you about it on the way. Come on, we should get back to the house before someone comes looking for us.

They all hauled themselves heavily to their feet, leaden with drowsiness and not looking forward to the long walk back up to the Burrow and then up to their respective rooms. Teddy waved his wand to extinguish the blue flames then again to vanish the blankets he had conjured and a third time to collected the floating light-orbs back into his wand. Then he lit his wand tip and lead the way back through the trees, followed by seven straggling, tired children.

"It's about time!" Dominique called down to them when she saw them emerging from the woods. She and Louis were taking their turn to drift around the paddock, occasionally tossing an apple at one another, too tired to really play anymore.

They landed. Roxanne shook Lucy awake, and the four of them joined the procession marching back to the house.

"So I take it whatever you're up to went well?" Dominique asked. "We could hear you cheering yourselves hoarse at the end there."

"I wouldn't say _well _exactly," James said darkly, thinking he would rather not have known so much about his mother's first year.

Dominique and Louis exchanged confused looks, but they didn't bother pressing the matter. There was something on the others' faces that made them decide against asking.

The garden was clear when they reached it. James was relieved. So was a lot of the group that had been reading. If they ran into Ginny right then, one of them was bound to give up the game.

"I was just going to send someone out to call you in," Mrs. Weasley said, smiling at her exhausted grandchildren as they poured into the kitchen. "How about a mug of coco before bed?" she asked, kissing the top of Lucy's head as her granddaughter shuffled sleepily over to hug her goodnight.

"Absolutely," Dominique said, collapsing into a chair, but at that moment the muffled conversation from the living room was broken by a quiet peal of laughter. They all recognized Ginny's voice.

Without thinking, Lily made to tear into the other room, wanting nothing more than to be in her mother's arms. But James caught her shoulders and held her back.

"No thanks, Gran, we're pretty tired. I think we'll just go up to bed."

And he pushed Lily down the hall and up the stairs, followed quickly by Rose, Hugo, Fred, Al, and Scorpius. Mrs. Weasley looked after them, frowning.

"What's up with that lot?" she asked the five still slumped around the table as she set the kettle to boil. "I've never known James to refuse chocolate of any kind."

Dominique shrugged, trying to think of a cover (although she had no idea what she was covering for).

"James forgot his gloves up in his room so he 'borrowed' one of Lily's, only it didn't really fit him and he lost it and now he's trying to stop her from squealing to Aunt Ginny," she reeled off, impressed by her lying ability at this time of night.

Their grandmother nodded, apparently accepting the story.

Teddy didn't wait for the hot chocolate to be finished. He slipped out of the kitchen and into the other room, past Percy and Audrey who were saying goodbye to Ginny as they headed for the door. Ginny stood by the fireplace, hugging herself and looking absently at the photos on the mantel as she got warm.

Teddy crossed over to her and wordlessly slipped his arms around her, squeezing her like he'd done when he was small, even though he towered over her now.

"Hey, Teddy," Ginny said, laughing a little with surprise. "What was that for?" she asked as he let her go.

Teddy shrugged. "Just haven't done it in a while."

"Well, I'll take it," she smiled, patting his cheek, searching his face. There was something off there, but she couldn't tell what it was.

XxXxX

"Hey, Vic," Dominique mumbled, slouching through the open bathroom door and snagging the toothpaste as her sister rinsed her mouth and spat into the sink.

"Hey, Dom," she mumbled back, leaning against the counter and beginning to plait her long strawberry-blonde hair.

Dominique brushed her teeth in thoughtful silence, wondering if she would get any answers if she asked. But she could hardly ask anyone else, so as she spat her last mouthful of mint into the sink, she nudged he bathroom door closed with her foot and turned to face her sister with a determined air.

"You know what they're doing, don't you," she said. It wasn't a question, but Victoire nodded in confirmation.

"Yes, I know, and I suppose you want to know too," she said calmly, still nimbly working on her hair.

"Well, if you can tell me," Dominique said. "I mean, I'll help them whether I know or not, but it would be really nice to _know _what I was covering for. I mean, if we're going to get busted, I'd like to be braced."

"A fair point," Victoire conceded. "And they probably will get busted. You saw the way they were looking tonight…. But, look, Dom. It's not really my place to blab."

"Come on, it's me," Dominique wheedled. "I won't even let on that I know."

She could tell her sister was on the verge of spilling, but some lingering shadow of honor or something was holding her back.

"Well… alright, I don't think they'd really care if you knew anyway, seeing as we're nearly all in on it. Just don't let Molly find out."

Dominique rolled her eyes. "What am I? Six? I'm not going to tell Molly."

"Or Lucy," Victoire said sharply. "I know she's helping us, but you know Molly would have it out of her in a second."

Dominique nodded ruefully. Lucy seemed to melt like butter around her sister.

"So what's the big secret?" she asked.

Victoire edged passed her and cracked the door open to check the landing before she answered in a low voice.

"Al found something in the library…"

Dominique listened interestedly as her sister quickly explained about the books. Of all the things she had thought her cousins might be up to, _reading _had not been on the list. But the reading material was intriguing.

"But look Dom," Victoire said when she had finished explaining, looking seriously at her little sister. "This isn't something to do with us. They've got something of a right to pry, but we – me and you and Louis and even Molly and Lucy, it's got nothing to do with us. It's not our place."

Dominique nodded earnestly. "Yeah, of course. I'm not about to go demand they include me. I mean, it would be something to know the whole story – especially form Uncle Harry's point of view. Hardly _anyone _knows that. But I would feel weird reading it, like I was listening in on something private. And I can see why Roxie didn't want to join. I'm not sure knowing everything is a good thing…"

"Yeah," Victoire murmured, leaning back against the counter. "Something bad happened tonight. Or at least they read about something they probably didn't want to. Rosie and Lily had tearstains on their cheeks and Al was lost in that little world he goes to when he's upset, like he's walking in a daze."

"Scorpius looked pretty miserable too," Dominique murmured, peeking cautiously out the door. "I just hope they know what they're getting into. There are some things you just can't ever forget…"

**A/N: Another one in on the secret… dun dun dun! :D Okay, so… I guess we're done with this book. Not sure when the next one will be started, but hopefully soon. Look out for some updates and rearranges on SS, since we've got to get the third book before we can start it. And don't be alarmed if SS loses a chapter or two in an update. We're smooshing and smoothing and fixing the little errors like having Roxanne at Hogwarts when she isn't due to start until September and stuff like that. We'll probably put another A/N on this story when we post the next book just you all will know. Thanks so much for sticking with us! You're great! **


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